Up First from NPR - Israel Strikes Qatar, ICE In Chicago, MAHA and Kids

Episode Date: September 10, 2025

Israel targeted Hamas leaders in Qatar as they were considering a deal to release all hostages, several people were killed but Hamas says none of its leaders were hit. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker spoke with Steve Inskeep as the Trump administration launches “Operation Midway Blitz “ in Chicago— sending hundreds of immigration agents to the city. And, the White House unveils its Make Our Children Healthy Again plan — with more than 100 recommendations on kids’ health, but critics say it leans heavily on RFK Jr.’s vaccine skepticism.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 Miguel Macias, Reena Advani, Gisele Grayson, Mohamad ElBardicy and Alice Woefle.It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas.We get engineering support from Damian Herring. And our technical director is Carleigh Strange.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Israel tried to kill Hamas leaders in an attack on Qatar's capital. We've got to get the hostages back. I was very unhappy about the way that went down. Can the talks over the war in Gaza continue after this attack? I'm Leila Faudil. That's Michelle Martin, and this is up first from NPR News. Immigration agents are in Chicago as part of a new operation by the Trump administration. He is attacking Chicago and announces that, This is Shyocalypse, and he wants to make it like apocalypse now and attack our city.

Illinois Governor J.P. Pritzker told our co-host Stevenski what that means for people in his state. And the White House releases new health recommendations for children, how much of it is based on science. Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day. It's one of Tom Magazine's top 100 podcast of all time, baby. Mm-hmm. They called our show, quote, a kind of cultural compass, never preachy, always curious, about the roots of inequality in people's lived experiences. Mm-hmm. I mean, I'm biased, but we couldn't have put it better ourselves.

And we are digging into all this every week. So make sure you catch the next episode of Code Switch on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. The suburbs of Qatar's capital, Doha, were rocked with explosions yesterday after Israel bombed Hamas' office and its residences there. It marks the first attack of its kind by Israel on Qatar, a U.S. ally that's been hosting Hamas leaders in exile and is a mediator in the war in Gaza. Here to tell us more about the attack and the fallout is NPR International correspondent Aya Batrawi, who is in Doha this morning. Aya, good morning. Thanks for joining us. Good morning, Michelle. So could you just start with explaining what exactly happened in Qatar yesterday?

Sure. So it was just before 4 p.m. here when explosions rang out in the capital in several locations, videos showed pedestrians screaming and running for cover on the street. And Doha is a city where the last FIFA World Cup was played. It's a major international travel hub. And this is where Trump came in May and lavished praise on the leadership here because it hosts thousands of U.S. troops. So this was a stunning attack.

and Israel's military claimed responsibility for it, saying it was targeting senior Hamas leaders who it says were, quote, directly responsible for the October 7th attack of 2023 on Israel. Now, one of the bombings targeted Hamas's office here in Doha, this is where I and other reporters have sat in interviews with the group's political leaders, some of whom say the decision to attack Israel actually came from its military wing inside Gaza on October 7th, not from them that they did not have prior knowledge of it. Either way, Israel missed its target. It did not kill any senior Hamas officials. Instead, it killed six people, according to Hamas, among them a Hamas official's son, the head of his office, three others with no titles with

Hamas, and a Qatari security officer. And what is Qatar saying about this attack? Well, Qatar's prime minister describes this as state terrorism. And Qatari's say they had no forewarning of the attack. So speaking from a podium last night, Qatar's prime minister said the attack on Qatar's soil is a message to the region that Israel is a role. player and that this attack is proof that Israel has worked to sabotage every attempt to achieve peace. And here I'll note that Qatar says its role as mediator and as host of Hamas's political leaders in exile has long been at the behest of successive U.S. administrations. And also keep in mind that for nearly two years now, Qatar and Egypt have served as mediators

between Israel and Hamas, hosting both sides and talks, some of them here at hotels in Doha, where mediators shuffle between floors to deliver messages between the two sides. And they've successfully mediated during Israel's war in Gaza the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian detainees, though a deal to end the war remains out of reach. Now, it is hard to see how Qatar might actually come and host Israel's top security brass here again after these attacks, or if Hamas would remain in Doha, especially given that Israel did not achieve its mission here. So as we understand this, Israel just tried to kill the Hamas officials who are responsible for negotiating ceasefire proposals, if I have that right.

So how might this attack affect those efforts to end the war in Gaza? That is correct, yeah. And this was a unilateral Israeli decision, according to President Trump. He spoke with Qatar's Amir after the attack yesterday and said the U.S. was not on board with it. Now, what we're hearing from Israeli officials like the defense minister and others is they're calling this now a quote, message. They say Israel will continue to pursue Hamas and that if the group does not surrender, they and Gaza will be annihilated.

So what this means for the war is that for people in Gaza, their suffering, displacement, the killing of civilians every day continues with no end in sight, and the families of Israeli hostages still held in Gaza, say the chance of bringing them back now

faces greater uncertainty than ever before. That is NPR International correspondent Aya Bertrali. Aya, thank you. Thank you, Michelle. Prisker is criticizing the Trump administration's surge of federal agents into Chicago. The administration has not sent in National Guard troops as threatened in recent days. It has instead sent federal immigration agents in an operation that it's calling Midway Blitz. As the operation got underway, the governor spoke with Steve Inskeep, who is in Chicago, and he's

with us now. Good morning, Steve. Good morning, Michelle. So what are the president's latest moves in Chicago, and how is the governor responding? Well, the president sent two big signals in recent days. One was a social media meme that played off a war movie and showed choppers moving in on Chicago. He later denied he was going to war. And the other is announcing the immigration surge. Here's how the Democratic governor Pritzker described it to me. It's almost like he's bipolar because on one hand, he is attacking Chicago and announces that this is chipocalypse. And he wants to be. wants to make it like apocalypse now and attack our city. On the other hand, he says, well, maybe I'll go somewhere else. Maybe we'll go to Portland or maybe we'll go to New Orleans. So it's really hard to tell what's evolving at the White House. But do you think that what's happened is that perhaps

he's realized that he cannot legally send the National Guard without your request? And so he perhaps needs to lean more on immigration authorities, which he can send in. I don't know. Donald Trump doesn't seem to follow the law all that much or listen to people who would tell him what's legal and what's not. I hope so, though, because it's not legal for him to send military troops into the city of Chicago. But immigration and customs enforcement agents are here. Local officials think up to 300 people operating out of a naval station north of the city, and they do not need Pritzker's permission to be here, Michelle. The government says they're conducting this operation in honor of an Illinois woman

who was killed in a drunk driving incident by a driver who was in the country without legal status and local officials have been tracking arrests in various parts of the city. And ICE may have more leeway to question people. The Supreme Court ruled in what agents can do on the street. How does that affect what's going on in Chicago? Michelle, it's not clear because the court gave no explanation for its ruling at all. We do know that this involved what was called racial profiling in Los Angeles, and the ruling seems to say that agents may question people who work in day labor

or who don't speak English well or have a certain ethnicity. And Governor Pritzker said he was dismayed that many people will now need to carry proof of their status. Look, I'm deeply concerned, particularly for people who have partial documentation, who are here legally, but they may not be U.S. citizens, right? They've got permission to be here. I'm particularly worried for them because nothing that they will carry will be good enough for ICE. So, Steve, do we have a sense from your reporting there where this is all going? Well, I do think it's not about to end. The president keeps saying he wants Pritzker to call him

and ask for troops to help with crime. Pritzker hasn't, says he's not, but I asked if he might call the president anyway to invite some other cooperation or accommodation, and he said no. Asking for any kind of help or having that conversation with him will become evidence in a case that I was asking for help, and therefore he's going to send in military troops. That's the challenge in this moment. But look, he has been confirmed. conversing with me by standing up in front of television cameras. I am conversing with him by standing up in front of television cameras. This was a video interview that we were doing, Michelle.

Now, Pritzker did express confidence that the immigration surge will subside eventually because he thinks before long agents will have to be deployed in some of the city. Our co-host, Steve Inskeep in Chicago. You can watch his full interview with Governor Prisker at npr.org. Steve, thank you. You're welcome. The Trump administration has released more than 100 recommendations it says should be taken to improve children's health. The new Make Our Children Healthy Against Strategy is a follow-up to a May report that outlined what it identified as the drivers of chronic health conditions affecting children.

Here to tell us more as NPR Health correspondent Maria Good morning. Good morning. So give us the overview. So this report serves up a smorgas board of action items that the administration's says should be implemented to increase the health of children, you know, from reinstating the presidential fitness test in schools to promoting breastfeeding. Now, I'd say a hefty portion of the recommendations deal with nutrition, research, and education for kids. But it also calls for studying the root causes of autism and for creating what it calls a new vaccine framework.

Now, Secretary of K Jr. is a well-known vaccine skeptic. Does this report call for outright changes in vaccine policy? It calls for making sure that a new vaccine framework. It calls for making sure that America has, quote, the best childhood vaccine schedule. And it also calls for, quote, addressing vaccine injuries. I spoke with Dr. Peter Hottes with Baylor College of Medicine. Here's what he said. Addressing vaccine injuries, that has become their euphemism for saying vaccines cause autism or neurodevelopmental disabilities. So it's more the same RFK pseudoscience. In the past, Kennedy has made statements linking autism with vaccines, even though dozens of studies have thoroughly debunked that claim.

Maria, you mentioned earlier that nutrition is a big focus of this report. And I do have to mention that when former First Lady Michelle Obama tried to call attention to diet and exercise for school kids, some conservatives ridiculed her for it. So what does RFK's report call for? Well, overall, it puts a big emphasis on physical activity and especially diet in determining the health of kids. And that's something every public health expert I spoke with said was indeed the right place to focus. Dr. Darius Mazafarian is at Tufts University. He praised the report's broad focus on nutrition. Another action item that Mazafarian applauded from the report was a call to close what's called

the generally recognized as safe loophole. It basically allows food companies to use ingredients that have not undergone a formal safety review by doing their own research to declare it's safe. So that's a really, really big deal. Again, overturning 35 years of basically open-door policy for food industry to do whatever it wants with food additives. But, you know, other public health advocates say that the report is overall light on specific details and does not actually crack down on ultra-processed foods, something that Kennedy has called for repeatedly. And they say that in the big picture, the administration has taken other moves that undermine

nutrition. Joel Berg is the CEO of Hunger Free America. He knows that the report calls for serving fresh local produce in schools, but the administration canceled a program that did that. What didn't we get at this report? Well, the first MAHA report identified chemical exposures as a driver of chronic illness and kids, but Dr. Philip Landrigan with Boston College said this one was basically silent on those issues. We know full well that many of the chemicals to which children are exposed are already damaging health.

And unfortunately, this report says nothing about controlling or reducing children's exposures to those chemicals that are known to be hazards. He says the report does not present a comprehensive blueprint for improving the health of America's children. That is, NPR's Maria could join. Maria, thank you. My pleasure. And that's Up First for Wednesday, September 10th. I'm Michelle Martin. And I'm Leila Falded.

Thanks for listening to Up First. You can find in-depth coverage of the stories we talked about today, along with other news on NPR's morning edition, the radio show that Michelle Martin, Stevenskeep, A. Martinez, and I hope. Find Morning Edition on your local NPR station at Stations.mpr.org or on the NPR app. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Miguel Macias, Rina Advani, Giselle Grayson, Mohamed El Bardisi, and Alice Wolffley. It was produced by Ziyadh, Nia Dumas, and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Damien Herring and our technical directors, Carly Strange. We hope you'll join us again tomorrow.

podcast without sponsor breaks, Amazon Prime members can listen to Up First sponsor-free through Amazon music. Or you can also support NPR's vital journalism and get Up First Plus at plus.npr.org. That's plus.npr.org.