Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Windsor, Johnston.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, who helped lead the nation's COVID-19 responses on Capitol Hill
“at the Tower, just a few minutes ago, he invoked the Fifth Amendment refusing to testify”
before the Senate Homeland Security Committee about the origins of the virus. Committee Chairman Rand Paul has long accused Fauci of misleading Congress about the pandemic and U.S. funded research. I hope today, Dr. Fauci, will come clean, admit it was a mistake to fund dangerous research in China, admit that the risk of this dangerous research exceeded any possible benefits,
ask forgiveness, and pledged to help our government devise safeguards, so a man-made
epidemic never happens again.
Dr. Fauci has maintained he never misled Congress and says the accusations against him are false. President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held talks at the White House on Tuesday amid growing tensions over the war with Iran, and PR's Franco-Ardonia's reports. The two sides launched a war together that Trump told the public would be relatively quick
and easy.
“It's now five months in and there's no end in sight.”
Michael O'Hanlin of the Brookings Institution says the relationship is very complicated now, tactically. We're making a lot of decisions and disagreeing on a lot of decisions about when to strike
what, and there's obviously the legacy of the last six months, where President Trump
despite his denial's material, like he got dragged into this a little bit by Netanyahu who is too optimistic about what we could accomplish. But he adds that he doesn't see a fundamental Russia, and that it's still cooperative, just more complicated because neither side seems to know how to end the war. Israel has one theory and Trump has another, Franco, or Donias, and PR news.
Firefighters in the Bordeaux region of France, they're making progress against two massive wildfires that have led to more than 220,000 evacuations. And PR's Eleanor Beardsley reports the country is bracing for its fourth heat wave, this summer.
“The heat over a hundred degrees, combined with high winds, could reignite the fires, say experts,”
Munion most of Fawy is a climatologist and board member of the French scientific expert group on climate change. She says the conditions that have ignited and sustained these fires were all predicted. At the rate Europe is warming, which happens to be faster than any other continent, models show heat wave days will be multiplied by five.
These heat waves, they create drought conditions, it's exactly what we had currently in France like we had three, three heat waves, we only in July, you know, August has not even started. Now the fourth heat wave is underway, Eleanor Beardsley and PR news, the Muronuk's Wah France. This is NPR news in Washington. Wildfires continue to burn across parts of Spain, as crews battle flames, fueled by extreme
heat and dry conditions. More than 100,000 people have been forced to evacuate from affected areas, including near mid-drid and in central Spain. Officials say this year's fire season is among the country's worst in decades. Spain declared a national emergency last week as crews struggled to contain multiple large
blazes. For casters, our warning that another round of dangerous heat could make fire fighting even more difficult. Democratic candidates have been focused on the economy ahead of the mid-terms, but as President Trump raises doubts about elections, some Democrats think they might need to
talk about democracy too. NPR's Ashley Lopez reports, Democrats have been dominating in special elections since last year, mostly by running on an economic message. This is why some operatives say candidates shouldn't get distracted by other issues cropping up, including threats to democracy, but Jane Cleb with the Democratic National Committee says
this was something she heard a lot in 2024 as well. It turns out that that was a fundamental issue that was motivating people, and that might not have been something that they were telling ex-apollers, or it wasn't something that was coming up on exit surveys or polling. One Democratic candidate told NPR urging voters to care about Democratic institutions because
ultimately they affect prices can be a way of talking about democracy and the economy at the
same time, Ashley Lopez and PR News. On Wall Street, doubt features are down 152 points at the sour. This is NPR. The mid-terms are coming and that means the new cycle, which is already intense, is about to get more intense this fall.
So the summer is a perfect time to make sure your news diet is calibrated. I'm Leila Faldin, on up first, we unpack the three biggest stories every morning so you can stay informed and get on with your day in less than 15 minutes.
