Up First from NPR - Iran Intelligence, Supreme Court Term Ends, Gaza Food Program

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

The administration has revealed new details about U.S. airstrikes on Iran's nuclear program, the Supreme Court hands down it's final rulings of the session today, and a new aid group in Gaza is drawing international controversy because hundreds of Palestinians have been killed while approaching the group's food distribution sites. Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Andrew Sussman, Krishnadev Calamur, Alex Leff, Janaya Williams and Alice Woelfle. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Stacey Abbott and our technical director is Carleigh Strange. Our executive producer is Jay Shaylor.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Military officers planned a strike on an Iranian nuclear facility for 15 years. They literally dreamed about this target at night when they slept. What were the results once the attack finally came? I'm Steve Inskeep with Amartinus and this is Up First from NPR News. The Supreme Court ends its term today with six rulings due, including one on birthright citizenship. Three lower courts have blocked the president's birthright citizenship executive order, and the court will decide whether judges have the authority to issue nationwide injunctions

against such things. And the U.S. has pledged funding for a new Israeli and U.S.-supported aid group in Gaza. Gaza health officials say hundreds of Palestinians have been killed as they approach the group's distribution sites for food. Stay with us. We'll give you all the news you need to start your day. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things and other currencies. With WISE, you can send, spend, or receive money across borders,

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The Trump administration has revealed a number of new details about U.S. airstrikes on Iran's nuclear program. The president's top military advisor described an operation many years in the making, and at the end of those years he said B-2 pilots put giant bombs on the target and returned safely. At the same briefing the defense secretary attacked the media but officials did not give much clarity on exactly how much damage the attack did to Iran's nuclear program. For more we're joined by NPR national security correspondent Greg Myrie. Greg, so are we any closer at all to knowing how much damage was done to Iran's nuclear program? Well, we're learning more but we

still don't have a clear assessment and it's probably not realistic to expect one at this point. All the evidence presented by the Trump administration shows the US airstrikes hit their target Sunday at three separate nuclear sites south of Iran's capital Tehran. But President Trump just got way out ahead of everyone by immediately saying the Iranian program was completely wiped out. There just doesn't appear to be enough intelligence yet to make such a definitive statement. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hagseth, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe

briefed senators on Capitol Hill Thursday. A number of senators emerged and said it's just too early to tell the full extent of the damage. And there was also that Pentagon briefing that Steve mentioned earlier, Greg, where we heard about how long the U.S. has been tracking developments at the most important nuclear site, Fordo. So tell us about the briefing. Yeah, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dan Kane, said the U.S. detected Iran's

work on the mountain in Fordow early on. So way back in 2009, the military selected a couple officers with the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency to work on this full-time. For more than 15 years, this officer and his teammate lived and breathed this single target for Doe. He watched the Iranians dig it out. He watched the construction, the weather, the discard material, the geology. Every nook, every crater, they literally dreamed about this target at night when they slept. And this was extremely sensitive and secretive work. They couldn't discuss it with family or friends. They just kept grinding away all these years with all the twists and turns involving Iran's nuclear program. So what problems did they see? Well, they came to realize the US didn't have a weapon that could reach

a target this deep inside a mountain, perhaps 300 feet down. So Kane said they collaborated with munitions experts and the result was this 30,000 pound bunker busting bomb known as the massive ordnance penetrator. They tested it over and over again. They accomplished hundreds of test shots and dropped many full-scale weapons against extremely realistic targets for a single purpose. Kill this target at the time and place of our nation's choosing. And that time and place came Sunday in Iran. Okay, so it seems like information is trickling in.

What are we learning though? Iran's foreign minister Abbas al-Raghchi said his country's nuclear facilities suffered serious damage, but he didn't provide details. And Rafael Grossi, the head of the UN's nuclear watchdog agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, also said he believes there was significant damage, but he doesn't think the entire nuclear program was destroyed. Now a big question is the whereabouts of 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium. Did Iran hide that somewhere before the US attacks?

Well, Grossi said Iranian officials told him they did take protective measures for that uranium which could be used for a bomb eventually. Right, that's NPR's Greg Meire. Greg, thank you. Sure thing, eh? Today is the last day of the Supreme Court term. Yeah, and the court has been releasing its rulings in many cases. Today, we expect to learn their opinions on the final six, including some of the biggest ones argued this term. NPR Legal Affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg is covering this and is in our studios once again.

Hi, Nina. Hi there, Steve. Okay, the major case we're looking at is on birthright citizenship. It revolves on the meaning of a phrase in the Constitution, a sentence, all persons born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States, the Constitution says. What should we be looking for in the case? Well, Donald Trump has issued an executive order saying that only some children born in the United States can be citizens.

And it's directly opposite of what the actual text says in the Constitution, and every judge to have ruled on it has said he's wrong. It's every baby born in the United States is it automatically an American citizen. The Justice Department, I think knowing that it was going to lose this case on the merits, didn't ask the court to reverse those decisions. Instead it went to court and said, please Supreme Court, these judges have made their rulings apply nationwide and that exceeds their authority. We want you to bar these kinds of nationwide injunctions, which if the court does that would make litigating against Trump administration policies exponentially more difficult.

Given what you said, that the administration went to the Supreme Court on this narrower question, could the justices rule anyway on the question of birthright citizenship and what it means? Look, they're the Supreme Court of the United States. They can do what they want. But the question wasn't briefed or argued, and it wasn't discussed in the argument at all. What are some of the other cases you're watching for? There's a big case from Montgomery County, Maryland, the tests where their parents are entitled to opt their children out of classes when they object to the school district's curriculum on religious grounds. This was a case involving grade school children and books that had gay and lesbian characters. But you could imagine that it might be also about teaching Darwin's theory of evolution.

So it has a lot of potential for punch, and school officials are pretty nervous about it. There's something about Obamacare before the court? Yeah, there's yet another challenge to the Affordable Care Act brought by conservative groups. This time, Obamacare's opponents are targeting a measure that requires most private insurance companies to provide free preventive care without copays or deductibles to both adults and children. And there are about 150 million people who benefit from this, and it'll be gone if the court rules with the

challengers. Finally, there's also a case challenging a Texas law that seeks to crack down on kids' access to pornography by requiring everyone, including adults, to provide proof of age on the website before they get access. So once the court rules on these cases, are you and they done for the summer?

Not quite. There are several cases on the shadow docket, otherwise called the emergency docket. These are consequential cases involving layoffs of federal workers, shuttering various agencies, deporting people without due process. So they're going to have to work over the summer, but they'll probably work from very glitzy places. Got it. Well, Nina will be listening for your coverage later in the day.

Thank you. NPR's Nina Totenberg. The U.S. is stepping up its support for a food program in Gaza that the United Nations has described as a death trap. The Trump administration says it's allocating 30 million dollars for that program. It comes at a moment when chaos is spreading in Gaza, where armed groups are now looting and attacking United Nations aid convoys.

Here to tell us more about this is NPR international correspondent Ayyab Atraoui in Dubai, and a warning that we will be talking about some graphic details of the violence in Gaza. So I'll start off by just telling us about this plan and why the Trump administration is funding it. Sure, so this is a plan that began in Gaza exactly a month ago.

And it's a plan that Israel devised and it works like this. A group calling itself the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation uses American contractors to distribute boxes of food in just four sites in Gaza. And these four sites are drawing thousands of hungry people every day desperate for food. Now Gaza's Health Ministry says hundreds of them have been killed and thousands wounded trying to reach these GHF sites since they began operations. This group GHF insists these shootings are not happening near their sites. But here's what State Department Tommy spokesman Tommy Pigott

had to say yesterday. We see the 30 million dollars approved. So that's what the story is here. Moving to implement, get those creative solutions in there to make sure that the aid being distributed is not being looted by Hamas. And he called on other countries to join in funding GHF. But this week a dozen human rights and legal groups warned that any countries or donors backing GHF are potentially liable for complicity in war crimes. But why is it so deadly right now to get food there?

You know, partly it's because these GHF sites were put in military zones where Israeli troops are positioned and where Palestinians are not supposed to be. And so people are being shot in these red zones. And Israel's military says it's fired warning shots at crowds approaching troops, clearing them out. The military says it's reviewing and undergoing learning processes like building fences and expanding routes to these sites. But these daily shootings continue. I want you to have a listen to American physician Dr. Adan Hossein from Dallas. He's been volunteering in Gaza for the past two weeks. He tells me every day he's treating people shot near these GHF sites. He called it a horror movie on repeat.

I can't tell you how many boys, young boys and adults that get rushed into my resuscitation bay, bleeding out from their abdomen, bleeding out from their head. And when I'm exposing them, trying to look for their injuries, what I find is empty bags. Empty bags that they had only hoped to fill with food just so that they could survive for a few more days. And, you know, he sent me photos this week of boys who've lost their eyes

and boys who've been paralyzed being shot by Israeli forces near these GHF sites. Wow that's difficult to hear. So this plan by Israel in the U.S. is supposed to keep aid from reaching Hamas but we're seeing these incidents of looting still happening in Gaza so who's behind that? So there's hardly been a trickle of UN aid allowed happening in Gaza. So who's behind that? So there's hardly been a trickle of UN aid allowed into Gaza and most of it's being looted by hungry people and armed clans. Now Palestinians say 128 trucks were stolen by armed clans in Southern Gaza in just the past two days. Now this comes as Israel has admitted to arming groups in Gaza to undermine Hamas, groups that are known

for looting. But what we're seeing now is even more clans clashing with Hamas security officials who are trying to crack down on this looting and the price gouging of these stolen goods in the markets. Now one of these clans actually raided Nasser Hospital where Dr. Hussain and other American doctors volunteer and opened fire inside yesterday. But we also yesterday saw Hamas security forces being targeted by an Israeli airstrike. The Gaza Health Ministry says 19 people were killed trying to get flour that these security forces had confiscated from the looters and were distributing to a crowd of people. Now these security forces are under the interior ministry which oversees the police.

Israel's military has acknowledged throughout the war targeting police in Gaza saying they're an arm of Hamas. Hundreds have been killed. But Gaza's police say they're not part of any political or armed wing of Hamas. Ultimately, you know, this chaos and breakdown of order is happening after more than 20 months of war as Hamas is also losing its grip on the territory. That's NPR correspondent, Taya Batraoui in Dubai. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, we're in the middle of the podcast. It gives you the latest news, three big stories of the day, but a big part of journalism as we do it at NPR News is to return to a story, to come back again and again.

And we're going now to hear in the next several minutes in a special part of this episode from a figure who is reinventing herself. Michelle Obama, the former first lady, says she's staying away from politics and campaigning and trying to bring her civilian self into view, specifically within view of our own Rachel Martin. She's our former co-host, who now hosts NPR's Wild Card, where she asks guests big questions about their lives, pulled from a deck of cards, and she's in our studios. Rachel, good to see you.

It is so good to be here. What new could be said about such a very famous person though? Right, this is a person whose life has been examined from the inside out for so many years. And now she very much wants to be in control of the narrative of her life. And that means getting to say no to things. I mean, you'll remember she did not go to President Trump's inauguration this year.

She did not go to President Jimmy Carter's funeral. She's saying what she wants to say, how she wants to say it, especially on this new podcast she's got with her brother. It's called IMO. She hosts it with Craig Robinson, where she wants to be, I mean, she wants to be able to be more casual. She wants to throw off all the limitations that were put on her as the first lady living in the White House.

Somehow she said yes to you while saying no to the current president. That's right. I feel very honored. Exactly. So what did you hear from her? Because she did not attend that funeral, the inauguration, all this kind of public chatter, even in the press, started picking up these rumors about her marriage. So I did not even bring this up to her. She brought it up, Steve. She very much wants to set the record straight.

She's not letting stuff like that lie anymore. And we've got some tape of that. Let's listen. Even in this phase in our lives, when Barack and I say something right or wrong, it does get covered. You know, the fact that people don't see me going out on a date with my husband sparks rumors of the end of our marriage.

I mean, it's sort of, so we still, you know, so that is- It's like the apocalypse. It's the apocalypse. It's like, okay, so we don't Instagram every minute of our lives. We are 60. We're 60, y'all. Speak for yourself.

Still got a little ways to go. But anyway, let's listen to some more of this conversation. And for people who are new to Wildcard, Rachel does hold up three cards at a time and the guest chooses a card with a question. Here we go. 1, 2, or 3. Let's do 1. Let's do 1.

Yeah. Has ambition ever led you astray? I don't know if my ambition has ever fully been able to actualize itself because of the nature of what me and my husband have done. I mean, you know, I guess you could... As a team. Right. You know, it wasn't about your individual ambition. Right, it was the team ambition.

And I went along, arguably kicking and screaming, right? And, you know, I think I'm now at a stage in my life where all my choices are mine. Now I can say that whatever I'm doing from this point on is about my ambition. And that's fairly new, right? Because as a working mother, I think all of that stuff, a working mother, you know, I think all of that stuff,

it kind of cut my ambitions short a little bit, because I had to make a set of decisions, okay, my husband's over here, I've got these kids over here, I don't know if I can afford to be ambitious right now. So I have to take a step back, even though ambition is there, I can see where I can make more money. I could do that. But I got these little kids that I love and I do want to go to the Halloween parade. And I want to, you know. So I think I kind of squelched my ambition. But now is a time for me to embrace my own ambition and to define it for me. So

maybe the answer is we'll see. Because I think I'm just now stepping, fully stepping into my own ambition. And right now I have not regretted it. Part of ambition in living your own life is saying yes to things you want to do. It's also saying no, I imagine, to things that you don't want to do. For sure. And we experienced that. One of the major decisions I made this year to stay put and not attend funerals and inaugurations and all the things that I'm supposed to. That was a part of me using my ambition to say, let me define what I want to do apart

from what I'm supposed to do, what the world expects of me. And I have to own that. Those are my choices, whatever the backlash was, I had to sit in it and own it. But I didn't regret it. You know? Yeah, because it's your life. It's my life now. And I can say that now. But we'll see.

Maybe next year we sit down, I go, you know, Rachel, I went a little too far. I'm going to rein it back in. I'm going to rein it back in. Three more. Three more. One, two, three. Two. Two. What's a piece of advice you are smart to ignore? Oh my gosh. You're not Princeton material. Oh my gosh.

You're not Princeton material. Who gave you that one? My college counselor in high school. Are you serious? I'm so serious. I've written about this. But yeah, I was a senior at Whitney Young Magnet High School. And yeah, it's a big school, magnet program.

I was a great student. I was an honor student. I was the treasurer of the senior class. But when I sat down with her, the woman who was supposed to encourage me, she lifted my dream big. Dream big. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She told me, I lifted my... Dream big, walking big doors. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She told me, I don't think you're Princeton material. So what was your in the moment?

I was furious. I was furious, but I was familiar with that bar lowering. Because it happens to minority kids, poor kids, kids of color all the time. People make snap judgments based on their biases and their limitations. They don't ask questions. And it helped me because throughout my life

when I would hit those roadblock or meet those people, I was lucky enough to be the child with the temperament that it didn't wound me, it angered me, and it made me think, I'll show you. Oh, you don't think I can do this. I'll show you. And I think I just walked away from that woman. I never talked to her again. Do you remember getting, I mean, it was probably an envelope in the mail, right?

When I got envelopes in the mail. Yes. You got your acceptance letter. It wasn't an email. It wasn't an email. It wasn't the click on. Right. Do you remember like looking for a camera?

The bigger one that was the good. Which is kind of harsh. Yeah. No, it was one of the proudest moments. You know, I didn't have a lot of support. It was one of the proudest moments. I didn't have a lot of support. My parents loved me, but once we started doing things like applying to Ivy League schools,

I mean, we were kind of out of their league, right? I mean, my mom could read over my essay, but everything I did felt amazing to her. I don't know if she or my dad felt like, well, you could change this segment or, you know, I mean, they weren't editing us. They were encouraging us. It looks good.

Go for it. Yeah, they're like, go forward. You are fabulous. Yeah. So I was relieved to prove the doubters wrong. Right. It wasn't just your parents who knew. It wasn't.

Somebody else sees this out here. Sometimes you need external validation. Yeah. Yeah. One, two, or three? Let's go with two. Two. How often do you think about death?

Hmm. My husband thinks this is morbid, but at 61, if I am lucky, if I am truly blessed, like 25 more summers. Oh yeah, I do that math all the time. Yeah. You know, when I measure out how old my kids are against that. Yeah. Because if you're not mindful about time, like 10 years, we've been out of office for 10 years. What happened? What happened in those 10 years? I mean, it's like, I did a lot, right?

I mean, two, three books, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, is that if I'm not mindful about it, the years slip away and you wind up spending a year doing what? Did you do anything you wanted to? Did you spend time with the people that you wanted to spend time with, doing the things

that you wanted to do? And there's a time in life for all young people where you just don't have that luxury because you're grinding and growing and building. You haven't earned it yet, right? And you should be out there doing and shaking and baking. But with 25 more summers, I want to know, I want to feel each one of them. I know.

I want to be like, ooh, this year, ooh, this was slow. It's like, I didn't do much of anything. Did I accomplish anything? You got to have a life for that slow life. I got bored and I was like, oh, I've read another book. Oh, it took forever. Do you think you're comfortable with real slowness though? Like, do you think that's not it?

Yes. Oh, you are, okay. Oh, yes, I am. And a day of nothing is one of those nice slow days where you look up and go, oh man, it's only noon. I want more of those because I want these last 25 summers to feel long and purposeful and mine. Not because I've given that time away and I looked up and it's all gone.

I've given it all away to everybody else and I don't even know what was left for me. And so I think all of that is a part of thinking about death. Totally. And when it comes, look that is a part of thinking about death. Totally. And when it comes, look, I'm not afraid of it, but... You're not? No, I'm not. But let me tell you one thing that was interesting to me, and I think you're the first person I share this with publicly, is like the last year of my mom's life, she was sick. Her body was just shutting

down for a number of various reasons. Her last bout of illness, she was with me in Hawaii, in our home in Hawaii, which was a blessing, right? Because she was forced to let me take care of her. She didn't want to. Oh my God. She wanted to be a burden. She didn't want to be a burden. I didn't want to be a burden. And ooh, did I say, I had doctors and nurses and everybody coming in and we had her diet and this and I was bossing her around and she was mad and she was like, I just want to go home.

And it's like, but you can't, you're stuck with me. I could just take care of her. And she got better and went back to Chicago. But we were sitting on the couch watching one of her court shows, because she liked court shows. And she was realizing that she will not ever be the same old self that she was. She was starting to realize she's coming to the end. And this woman that prepared me for death, right, and talked to me about all this stuff and was like, I'm ready to die.

Who needs to be old people around too long? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. She leaned over to me and she said, wow, this went fast. And I held her hand and I said, what are you talking about? And she said, life. She said, this went fast. And this was the woman who was ready. And what that told me was that even when you tell yourself

you're ready, if you're living a good life, you're never really ready for it to end, right? So I hope I feel that way, even though I will be ready for it, you know, because it's been good and purposeful that I'll feel like, shh, I wish I had more time. So I'm trying to live my life like that, you know. Rachel, darn you. Get your stupid cards. Oh, God. Oh, my God.

I think she meant stupid as a compliment. She did. For sure she did. I took it that way. Opened up. You got it open up, and there's more of this conversation, I believe. Yeah, you can listen to a longer version of that conversation if you search for Wild Card with Rachel Martin in your podcast app, and you can even watch a video of that entire

episode on YouTube or Spotify. Rachel, thanks for coming by. It's always great to see you. Thanks, Steve. You have your job, but you also have a life. And you're not just one thing. Neither is the Here and Now Anytime podcast. Every weekday, we break down the biggest story of the day and something else, like a new trend everyone's talking about. It's Here and Now Anytime, a daily podcast from NPR and WBUR. from Star Wars on his life's greatest aspiration, doing silly cartoon voices in

the moment that he realized his dream. I did a terrible Donald Duck, but it made me think that's what I want to do. I want to do cartoon voices. That's on Bullseye for MaximumFun.org and NPR.