Up First from NPR - White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Ukraine hits Russian Retailer, India Protests

Episode Date: July 25, 2026

A recap of President Trump’s hour-long speech at the rescheduled White House Correpondents’ Dinner. Ukrainian drones have targeted Russia’s airfields and oil refineries and are now going after Wildberries, Russia’s large e-commerce retailer. Young people’s protests in India over entrance exams have resulted in the resignation of the country’s education minister today.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Last night in Washington at a rescheduled White House correspondence dinner. What do we do here? Is this supposed to be fun? Am I supposed to be serious? Am I supposed to be a comedian? I'm Ayesha Roscoe? And I'm Scott Simon, and this is up first from NPR News. Yesterday, the White House said the president's remarks would be, quote, unifying yet vicious. Well, just how unifying and how vicious. We'll have a recap.

Also, Ukrainian drones have hit Russian oil refineries and airfields, and now a new target, Russia's version of Amazon. Also, a young people's protest movement in India, which began with frustration over entrance exams. What are their demands? So please stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your weekend. In April, after the White House correspondence dinner came to an abrupt end, President Trump characterized his aborted speech. speech is, quote, a doozy. That dinner was interrupted when a gunman fired shots in the hotel lobby, and the president and other attendees had to be evacuated. The dinner was rescheduled for last night, and President Trump made jokes about bulletproof vests and said he was taking a softer tone with the media

than he'd planned in his original speech. Oh, that was going to be a doozy. I was so psyched. I was going to rip people. and I don't know, just something changed. It's really for the better, but I just wouldn't want to do that. But we'll do a little ripping if you don't mind. Ripping did the president get. NPR's media correspondent, David Fokkenflict joins us. David, thanks so much for being with us. Pleasure.

Let's just say there's often a rift seemingly between the White House and the media. Did they have a civil dinner? Well, I would say it was civil, but it was pretty surreal. You heard the president's speech? What do you take from it? Well, first, let me say there were folks from NPR at the dinner, and I don't speak for NPR on this. I'm talking to you, Scott, as your media critic this morning. I would say from a Trump standpoint, you know, he was there, you know, at the lectern for over an hour, giving a fair amount of one-liners going after his critics, the people who are his political

opponents, Democrats, potential replacements for the next presidential race, people he sees his enemies, people in the press, you know, and anytime the guy's in front of a microphone, he's going to indulge in these instincts. From my perspective, somebody who thinks about comedy, he sounded a lot like Don Rickles channeled by Christopher Walken. But these were jokes, by and large, that weren't landing. I mean, people were sitting stone-faced in front of it. There wasn't a lot of mirth and laughter that night, even though it's supposed to be a night

where, yes, he pokes fun at everybody else. but a president, any president, you know, goes after himself as well in the spirit of acknowledging the press's job is to kind of hold him accountable. I know we should remind ourselves it wasn't just an occasion for comedy or maybe we should phrase that attempts at comedy because journalism awards were given at the dinner, often for tough coverage of the president and the administration. How did that go? Well, look, you know, it was, as I said, surreal.

you saw the Wall Street Journal being honored for stories breaking revelations of Trump's contribution to a birthday book for the disgraced late financier Jeffrey Epstein two decades ago. You know, that was the occasion for Trump to personally sue the Wall Street Journal in a multi-billion dollar suit over that story. He kind of grimaced and smirked and nonetheless shook the hands of the reporters. Tyler Pager of the New York Times was honored for his reporting. The Department of Justice was just forced to withdraw. subpoena to him and to colleagues for their testimony in front of grand jury over a story that

outraged the White House about security concerns within the government over the new Air Force one aircraft that was gifted to the president by the Qatari government. You know, this was an extraordinary juxtaposition of these incredible clash between these two institutions, the New York Times, just having prevailed in court and the president's administration. David, how would you characterize relations between Trump and the media? Well, look, Scott, President Nixon set the tone for what it's like to have a president who's using power to go after the press and threaten and menace the press and intimidate it. President Trump has blown past all of that. And I think if you look at this dinner, it shows the Washington Press Corps, at least as embodied by the White House Correspondents Association, has shown it hasn't.

adequately grappled with that. You know, it's at a dinner that's supposed to honor the First Amendment, supposed to honor independent reporting. And in a sense is honoring the president's relationship with the press, which he did give a nod to. But they seem to think it's Washington as usual. And Trump has made sure that it's not. And he knows that it isn't. NPR media correspondent David Folkenflict, David, thanks so much. You bet. There's a new front in the war between Russia and Ukraine. Online Retail. Overnight, Ukrainian drones attacked a facility tied to Russia's equivalent of Amazon, a company called Wildberries. It was the 10th Ukrainian drone strike against Wildberry's warehouses this week. And Paris Charles Mainz joins us now from Moscow. Charles, thanks for being with us.

Thanks for having me on the show. Tell us about how these attacks have been going on this week. Well, starting last Saturday and just about every day since, Ukrainian drones have struck these giant warehouses, belonging to wildberries, causing massive fires to facilities outside of Moscow, outside of St. Petersburg, in several cities in the south of Russia. The costs have come in lives. At least nine workers are dead, dozens more injured, several of whom were migrant workers from Central Asia. But of course, there's also material costs.

Wildberries is Russia's largest online retailer, and its warehouses are full of goods from small and mid-sized Russian businesses who've taken to social media to say these attacks have caused their financial ruin. So this is just one example. Kriel Volov, who runs a small clothing line, sounding rather depressed here, as he describes how a third of his product, $150,000 in goods, just went up in smoke in a wildberries warehouse outside of Moscow. What can you tell us about wildberries?

Well, you know, you might have this impression of Russian business as run by oligarchs, gray men in gray suits. Wildberries is about as far. as that as you can go, it's really kind of a remarkable story. It was founded by a woman named Tatiana Kim in 2004. She was a school teacher turned stay-at-home mom who started selling hard-to-find quality clothes out of her family's apartment. Now, critics will say there's a bit of public relations myth-making going on here. Kim got a bit of money from a then-husband who worked in the IT sector that helped launch the business. But fundamentally, Wildberries is a story of a woman who had an idea

that caught on. You know, it's not a business empire handed to her from the spoiled of Soviet industry or, say, resource extraction. How did it become Russia's biggest online retailer? The wildberries, it doesn't sound like a Russian name. It is not a very Russian name, Scott. Yeah, you know, Kim chose wildberries and the company's neon pink WB logo because she thought it sounded positive, progressive, and Western. Kim actually taught English.

And in the Russian context, it was an important piece of this brighter, middle-class, consumer-driven future that so many Russians seem to want. and that seemed so within reach as the Russian economy grew in the aughts and beyond. What would everyone could choose. What would be it. As Kim herself says to the camera in this Wildberry's commercial from a few years ago, what if everyone could choose what they wanted. And, well, a lot of people chose Wildberries,

particularly amid the war in Ukraine and Western sanctions that followed, as key Western brands packed up and left, online retail really took over, a little Wildberry's distribution point. popped up on seemingly every corner. And it's made ordering online deliveries incredibly convenient and preserved a sense of normalcy, I think, for the Russian consumer.

It's also made Tatana Kim Rich. Her net worth is around $8 billion with a B that's making this former schoolteacher Russia's wealthiest woman. Why do you think Ukraine is attacking Wildberries? Well, Ukraine says, yeah, wildberries sells everything, and that includes military hardware.

Here's Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelensky, announcing the first attack on Wildberries last Saturday, and saying the warehouses were used to distribute navigation systems and components for drone production, as well as other supplies for the Russian army. And is that true? Well, Tatana Kim denies it, and so does the Kremlin, which calls the targeting of Wildberry an act of terrorism. What I'll say is this. Wildberries doesn't sell weapons, but it does carry items which might fall into the category of dual-use technology, whether that's civilian toy drones or camouflage hunting gear or electronics,

whose computer ships could be of some use on the battlefield. And whether that justifies these attacks are not, Kiev seems to have decided that hitting commercial logistics hubs is yet another way to bring the war home to Russians, along with, say, strikes on energy infrastructure. And I think Russians are learning what Ukrainians have known for several years now, that these soft targets are really, really difficult to defend. And Pierre's Charles Mainz in Moscow. Thanks so much.

Thank you, Scott. In India, Jinzirs, tens of thousands of them have been demanding the resignation of India's education minister. Today they got the news they've been waiting for. That's the sound of protesters cheering after the minister posted his resignation letter on X. NPR's Omkar Kandakr joins us now from New Delhi. Thanks for being with us. Thank you for having me. Ombkar, what started this protest movement?

So for weeks now, Indian youth have been demanding the resignation of its education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan. In May, questions for the entrance exam for India's medical colleges had leaked. This meant more than 2 million aspiring doctors had to retake the exam that they spent years prepping for. Now, such leaks have happened for years. So for many, this was the final straw. Their protest started in early June, with a few hundred people at a protest. protest site in central Delhi, but since then, it seems like their number has multiplied every day. In fact, when I went to the Delhi protest site last night, it felt like a carnival.

People were out on dates or with their families. They were chanting slogans, making videos for social media. Some wore Batman masks to evade surveillance cameras. And one group had reworked a popular love song to mock the Prime Minister Narendra Modi. So he's saying Modi has robbed the country. Modi has led down the students. And as one poster pointed out, and I quote, they messed with the wrong generation.

Amkar, you said this was the final straw for many of the protesters. What other issues have been fueling their demonstrations? So on the face of it, this is a protest for educational reforms. But folks also tell me that they are tired of the corrupt. unemployment and the rising cost of living. Now, India has struggled to create jobs even before the Modi government was sworn in 12 years ago. But economist Rosa Abraham says this has been getting worse. You know, there's this double burden that youngsters are bearing that even after a degree they're not finding jobs and they're not finding jobs that pay well.

How has Modi's government responded to the protests? Well, first they vilified the protesters. The Education Minister even compared them to terrorists. When they marched to the Parliament earlier this week, security forces attacked them with tear gas, even pellet guns. Now, of course, those scenes were widely shared online and that triggered protests in other Indian cities. So in his resignation letter today,

Education Minister Pradhan said that he did not want the student anger to be exploited by what he called anti-national forces. He did not mention the dozens of students who were injured in the police violence. And he did not apologize for the paper leaks. Amkar, what should we expect next? The protest leaders, they want systemic reforms to prevent exam paper leaks and punishment for the policemen who attack the protesters. The government has said that its ministers would meet with them today and hear them out.

But this is among the rare times that the Modi government has yielded to public pressure. Political analysts, Sashan Singh, told me that the protesters have achieved something even more remarkable. The climate of fear, you know, in which a lot of Indians were operating, that you can't criticize Modi, etc. That climate of fear is gone. He says, this crowd cut across caste, class, class, religion and language. And that unity, he says, is something India hasn't seen. in a long time. And Piers, I'm Kirk, Ken Daker. Thanks so much for being with us. You're welcome, Scott.

That's up first for Saturday, July 25th, 2026. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. And I'm Scott Simon, but boy, do we have a lot of help to put this pod together, producing it Dave Mistich, along with Danica Paneda and Samantha Balabach. Our editors include Emily Kopp, Hannah Block, Miguel Macias, Jacob Finston, Martin Patience, and Melissa Gray. Our director is Elena Torrick, who worked alongside our technical director, David Greenberg, Swift is an arrow, who is a razor. Our engineering team includes Simon Laslo Janssen, Jay Sizz, and Zoe Van Gogh. Shannon Rhodes is our senior supervising editor.

Evie Stone is our executive producer. And Catherine Laidlaw is our deputy managing editor. Tomorrow on the Sunday story, on the 368. anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act becoming law, we'll hear about the history of the disability rights movement, from the protests that secured accessible public transit to the modern day fight to protect the right to live independently. Thank you for listening and for supporting your local NPR station. And if you need to find your local NPR station, and boy, we could all stand to find our local NPR station. Go to Stations.NPR.R.

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