Up First from NPR - Trump Meets Syria's President, Russia-Ukraine Peace Talks, RFK Jr. On Capitol Hill

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

President Trump is due to meet with Syria's new leader as the administration prepares to lift sanctions on the country. Could he also participate in Ukraine-Russia peace talks in Turkey? Plus, on Capitol Hill Wednesday, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is expected to defend his sweeping changes at the Department of Health and Human Services.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 Ryland Barton, Diane Webber, Ally Schweitzer and Alice Woelfle. It was produced by Ana Perez, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Neisha Heinis, and our technical director is Carleigh Strange. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Just a few months ago, Syria's new president was on the United States list of designated terrorists. Now, he's meeting with President Trump as the U.S. adopts a new stance towards Syria after the fall of Assad's regime. I'm Michelle Martin, that's Amy Martinez, and this is Up First from NPR News. Russia and Ukraine are scheduled to hold peace talks this week. Still unclear as to whether President Trump will attend, Ukraine's president questions whether Putin will either.

Russia is not ready for any kind of negotiations. And Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says his cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services are streamlining the agency, but are they, quote, making America healthy again? Lawmakers get a chance to ask today. Stay with us. We've got all the news you need to start your day. You may have heard that President Trump has issued an executive order

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President Trump is in Saudi Arabia. Yeah, he met in Riyadh with Syria's new leader who just months ago was on the US designated list of terrorists with a $10 million bounty on his head. The meeting comes after Trump saying he will lift decades of US sanctions on Syria, the country's economy struggling following its civil war and the ouster of the Assad regime. To talk about this and more, we're joined by NPR's Aya Batraoui in Riyadh. Hi, Aya. Good morning.

Good morning, Michelle. So how significant is Trump's decision to lift sanctions on Syria? Michelle, this could transform the region, not just Syria. And to get a sense of how big this decision is, have a listen to the reaction in the room when Trump announced this. He was at an investment forum in Riyadh in front of the Saudi crown prince when he said this. I will be ordering the cessation of sanctions against Syria

in order to give them a chance at greatness. So this brought Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the entire room to their feet in a standing ovation. And it matters because Syria is a pillar of the Middle East. It's a beacon of culture and intellect. But for more than a decade it was crumbling and it was impoverished from civil war. This destabilized parts of the region and throughout those sanctions were really hurting average Syrians.

You know, hospitals were struggling to get spare parts to keep machines or even elevators running. But now Trump says that was then and this is now and this new Syria led by Ahmed Al-Shara says it's ready to build a relationship with the United States. Now Trump's meeting with him today lasted half an hour. It included the Saudi Crown Prince and Turkey's president joined over the phone. They touched on security concerns that the US has with some extremist groups still in Syria. Another reason this reset matters though, Michelle, is that Arab states don't want Iran to have a foothold in Syria anymore, and the US doesn't want Russia building back its bases

there. So, you know, we heard those cheers in the room, but is anybody not on board with this decision to lift sanctions? You know, lifting sanctions like this will be a complicated process. Syria is listed as a state sponsor of terrorism, and for that to be changed, this would have to go through Congress. Also Israel has been carrying out airstrikes inside Syria for months. They call the new government extremists and they have troops positioned deep inside Syrian

territory indefinitely. Israel says it's concerned Syria could become a base of attacks. And we know that just last month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had asked Trump not to lift sanctions on Syria. Okay. So we know that President Trump had been planning to focus on business deals while he's in the region. How have those deals been shaping up? So the Crown Prince told Trump he would get at least $600 billion in Saudi investments into the U.S. over the next four years. And the bulk of this is in defense and weapons sales to the kingdom, but it also includes deals in tech and AI. Now Trump

brought with him to Riyadh, America's top CEOs from companies like Google, Amazon, Nvidia, Boeing, and they lined up to greet Trump and the Crown Prince in a lavish reception. The handshakes show just how pivotal Trump is to the Crown Prince's relaunch. You know, it was only seven years ago that the world turned The focus on two things. First, it'll be Qatar's unique role in the region as host to the biggest number of US troops in the Middle East, but also as a host to groups the US doesn't traditionally talk to like Hamas, which the Trump administration is directly negotiating with that led to the release of a US Israeli soldier and hostage on Monday. So we might hear surprises from Trump in Qatar later today about his vision for a Gaza ceasefire. That is NPR's Aya Batraoui and Ria, thank you. Thanks, Michelle.

Efforts to pause or even end the war in Ukraine enter a new phase this Thursday. Representatives from Russia and Ukraine are expected to gather in Turkey for negotiations, their first since the early months of the Kremlin's full-scale invasion in 2022. MPR's Charles Maines is covering this story. He's in line from Moscow. Charles, how do these talks even come about? Yeah, sure. You know, to a degree, I think you can credit efforts by the Trump administration to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, even if at times those efforts skewed heavily in Russia's favor. Because this meeting, it comes amid wrangling between Moscow and Kiev to show President Trump, they're

the more serious party for peace, or at least the other is an obstacle to it. Show Trump? It makes it sound like they're almost competing for Trump's favor. I mean, is that what's happening here? You know, it does seem that way. This latest maneuvering began after Russian President Vladimir Putin unilaterally called for a three-day ceasefire around events marking the Soviet victory in World War II. That was last week.

Ukraine never agreed, but only because it said, why just three days? We could have a longer ceasefire. That idea got backing from Europe and the US, who to give it some teeth, threatened new sanctions if Putin didn't commit to an immediate 30-day ceasefire. But instead, Putin made a counter offer. He called for direct talks with Ukraine starting Thursday in Istanbul. Let's listen. So here Putin says military operations are ongoing, a war is happening, and we are offering

a return to negotiations. Adding what could be bad about that. So I mean, is this a change of heart for Russia or a political tactic? Well it certainly appears strategic. President Trump endorsed the idea and demanded Ukraine participate, and that's forced Europe to hold off on new sanctions against Russia for now. So it's bought Moscow some time. All right.

Now who is headed to Turkey for these negotiations? Do we know who is on the list there? Well, Ukrainian President Lodomir Zelensky says he'll be there, and he's challenged Putin to show up, even as he's expressed skepticism over Putin's motives. So here Zelensky says he doesn't believe Putin actually wants to end the war or a ceasefire, and that this is essentially all just a stalling tactic.

And yet it sounds like Zelensky has thrown the gauntlet down. I mean, what are the chances that Vladimir Putin does come? Well, you know, the Kremlin routinely presents Zelensky as illegitimate, so there are reasons to doubt Putin would engage directly, but entered President Trump, currently in the Middle East as we just heard, who suggested he might stop by for the talks. That's prompted speculation Putin might as well, although it certainly involves a lot of stars aligning, probably too many. Okay. So whatever form these meetings actually wind up taking, I mean, what are the chances of a deal? Well, if Trump, Putin, and Zelensky really do gather

in a room together, I think anything could happen. But without them, some kind of ceasefire seems the best hope. And even that would take some doing. The Kremlin sees an extended truce as a way for Ukraine to rearm at a moment when Russia has the battlefield advantage. And Russia's demanding a stop to all Western arm shipments to Ukraine as a result. All right. That's NPR's Charles Maynes in Moscow. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will be on Capitol Hill today, testifying for the first time since he became

secretary of health and human services. Since Kennedy was sworn in, in February, he has moved to reshape the department, firing thousands of people, canceling billions of dollars in grants, and purging scientific leaders. NPR's Selena Simmons-Duffin is here to give us a preview of today's hearing. So it sounds like Kennedy has a very busy day today. Yeah, so in the morning he's testifying in the House before the Appropriations Committee, and in the afternoon he heads to the Senate.

There he'll testify before the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. And the topic for both hearings is the president's budget proposal for HHS. Kennedy will explain why he wants less money for his department in the coming year. And that's certainly connected to the Doge effort to shrink government, but Kennedy is also trying to fundamentally reshape the mission of HHS and reorient it to his priorities. All right, so tell us about those priorities because I know he's worried about chronic diseases. Yeah, he calls it a chronic disease epidemic. He even ties the size of HHS in terms of staff and budget with what he describes as the worsening health of the American population.

As a reminder, HHS is the health umbrella agency, so it oversees CDC, the FDA, Medicaid and Medicare, the NIH. In April, Kennedy fired 10,000 staff members, eliminating whole centers and divisions across the department. Here he is on NewsNation earlier this month defending those moves. It's not throwing money at it or hiring people that is solving the problem. We have so much redundancy in our agency. We have a hundred communications departments. We have 40 IT departments. We have 40 procurement departments. We're streamlining the agency and we're recalibrating its trajectory. I should say the rollout of these firings has been chaotic and Kennedy has not seemed to be terribly familiar with what and who have been cut and what remains.

He said the speed of the firings was necessary to not lose quote political momentum. All right, so a lot happening. What will you be listening for? What questions are you expecting? Well, definitely there'll be questions about the overhaul. As I said, whole centers at CDC were eliminated including violence prevention, reproductive health, workplace safety, including violence prevention, reproductive health, workplace safety, including services for coal miners with black lung. At FDA, food safety labs were hit, some routine inspections have been delayed or canceled. And even though the overhaul was billed as being about administrative redundancies, many core functions of the agency, including those required by Congress, are now in limbo, and

lawmakers may have a lot of questions about that. There are other big questions too, like measles in West Texas is still a big problem. There are growing concerns about bird flu. Kennedy's approach to autism I'm sure will be asked about. And the cuts to biomedical research will definitely come up as well. This isn't just shrinking the staff and budget of the National Institutes of Health, it's also slashing funding to universities, and that research can be an economic driver in communities all over the country, including in red states like Alabama. So I'm curious to hear whether there's a bipartisan objection to Kennedy's moves there. So you've been calling up former US health secretaries to ask their views of Kennedy's approach to the job. What have you heard from them? Yeah, I actually reached three former

secretaries. One of the ones I talked to was Tommy Thompson. He was secretary under President George W. Bush. He said he didn't want to criticize Kennedy for making cuts, but... I wish they had learned a little bit more about the department before they do it. He said it's up to Congress to decide whether all of these cuts should stay, and we'll know a lot more after hearing from lawmakers how much they plan to push back on Kennedy's overhaul. That's NPR's Selena Simmons-Stuffin. Thanks a lot. Thank you. And that's Up First for Wednesday, May 14th. I'm Amartinez.

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