Blanche Confirmation Hearing, US and Strait of Hormuz, ICE Vehicle Stops
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche will be on Capitol Hill today for his high-stakes confirmation hearing to lead the Justice Department permanently.
President Trump has talked about the US fully controlling the Strait of Hormuz. But for the US military that means much more than imposing yet another blockade on the key waterway.
The third fatal ICE shooting in a week is now prompting a policy shift at the agency. According to Senator Angus King, ICE will now suspend most vehicle stops during enforcement operations.
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 Andrew Sussman, Anna Yukhananov, Alina Hartounian, Mohamad ElBardicy, Alice Woelfle, and Ziad Buchh.
It was produced by Paige Waterhouse and Nia Dumas.
Our director is Christopher Thomas.
We get engineering support from Neisha Heinis. Our technical director is Carleigh Strange.
And our Supervising Producer is Michael Lipkin.
(0:00) Introduction
(1:49) Blanche confirmation hearing
(5:38) US and the Strait of Hormuz
(9:32) ICE Vehicle stops
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
President Trump has talked about the US fully controlling the Strait of Hormuz. But for the US military that means much more than imposing yet another blockade on the key waterway.
The third fatal ICE shooting in a week is now prompting a policy shift at the agency. According to Senator Angus King, ICE will now suspend most vehicle stops during enforcement operations.
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 Andrew Sussman, Anna Yukhananov, Alina Hartounian, Mohamad ElBardicy, Alice Woelfle, and Ziad Buchh.
It was produced by Paige Waterhouse and Nia Dumas.
Our director is Christopher Thomas.
We get engineering support from Neisha Heinis. Our technical director is Carleigh Strange.
And our Supervising Producer is Michael Lipkin.
(0:00) Introduction
(1:49) Blanche confirmation hearing
(5:38) US and the Strait of Hormuz
(9:32) ICE Vehicle stops
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
2026-07-15
13 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.