DHS Funding Negotiations, Russia Attacks Ukraine Power Grid, Nationalizing Elections

Up First from NPR

Congress ended the shutdown but now faces a tight deadline to fund the Department of Homeland Security, with Democrats and Republicans far apart over immigration enforcement reforms after two U.S. citizens were killed by federal agents in Minnesota.
Russia has resumed heavy strikes on Ukraine’s power grid during extreme cold, despite President Trump saying Vladimir Putin agreed to pause attacks, putting new strain on fragile diplomatic efforts.
And President Trump is calling for the federal government to “take over” elections in some states, escalating concerns among election officials about interference ahead of the midterms.

Want more 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 Anna Yukhananov, Miguel Macias, Ben Swasey, Mohamad ElBardicy, and Alice Woelfle.

It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas, and Christopher Thomas.

We get engineering support from Neisha Heinis. Our technical director is Carleigh Strange.

Our Supervising Producer is Michael Lipkin.

(0:00) Introduction
(01:52) DHS Funding Negotiations
(05:27) Ukraine Peace Talks
(09:26) Trump Nationalizing Elections

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

2026-02-04 12 min

Available Results

Generated results are saved to the knowledge database for reuse and search.

No generated results are available for this episode yet.

Extract Knowledge

Pick what you want extracted first. Model, scope, and chapter options appear after a template is selected.

Generated results for public episodes are saved to the knowledge database so they can be reused and searched later.

Transcript

No transcript is available for this episode yet.
Sign in to generate a transcript for review.
Sign in

Chapters

No chapters available.