April 24, 2026

Brittney Melton

up first newsletter writer

Good morning. Mentalist Oz Pearlman will headline the White House Correspondents’ Dinner tomorrow, bucking from the decades-old tradition of featuring a comedian. Here’s the news we’re following today:

Today’s top stories

Mourners hold posters that show portraits of Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil, who was killed Wednesday in an Israeli airstrike, during her funeral procession in the village of Baysariyeh, in southern Lebanon.

Mohammed Zaatari/AP

President Trump has ordered the Navy to “shoot and kill any boat” trying to lay mines in the Strait of Hormuz. Shipping through the Strait has nearly stopped over fears of mines, Iranian attacks and seizures of ships. The president says he is prepared to wait for the best deal to end the war with Iran.

🎧 There are no reliable figures on how many mines are in the Strait, NPR’s Jackie Northam tells Up First. She adds that they may not be as many as Iran is letting on, or Iran might not know where all of them are. Clearing these mines is a slow and dangerous task, especially amid the risk of attacks. Northam says this week's gunfire attacks and seizures of two ships by Iran have had a chilling effect on the already small number of ships trying to make it through the waterway.

➡️ Trump announced yesterday that Israel and Lebanon have agreed to extend their ceasefire for three weeks following high-level negotiations at the White House. This extension aims to maintain the fragile truce to pause fighting between the Israeli military and the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.

The Trump administration is easing restrictions on medical marijuana by moving it from the restrictive Schedule I to Schedule III, a category that includes drugs like Tylenol with codeine and anabolic steroids. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the move yesterday, saying it "allows for research on the safety and efficacy of this substance, ultimately providing patients with better care and doctors with more reliable information."

🎧 The reclassification is expected to further normalize the marijuana business, potentially expanding banking services and enabling common tax deductions that are currently unavailable. The order changes the regulation, not legalization. Medical-only states like Florida and Oklahoma will benefit from the order quickly, says reporter Ben Markus with NPR network station Colorado Public Radio. The Department of Justice is swiftly moving to more broadly reschedule marijuana, which could benefit recreational businesses. An administrative hearing is set for June.

Wildfires are currently scorching acres of land in South Georgia and Northern Florida. One wildfire in Georgia has destroyed nearly 90 homes and forced residents to evacuate. The area has experienced worsening drought for months, making it easier for wildfires to spread and complicating firefighters' efforts to contain them.

🎧 People in Georgia's Brantley County are pretty shaken, Emily Jones of NPR network station WABE says. They've seen hurricanes, but they're not used to dealing with wildfires. Evacuation orders continue to pop up suddenly as the fire shifts with the wind. Jones says that’s been tough on people — they think they’re ok, and before they know it, police or firefighters show up telling them they need to get out. “It's just a heartbreaking thing to leave your home and not know what you're gonna come back to," Spring Gillis, who was ordered to evacuate, tells Jones.

For the first time, U.S. officials have leveled criminal charges against someone over prediction market wagers. Federal prosecutors yesterday unsealed an indictment against U.S. Army Special Forces soldier Gannon Ken Van Dyke, accusing him of reaping more than $400,000 in profits on Polymarket by using insider knowledge of the military operation to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. The Justice Department and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed the actions against him. Van Dyke, who was stationed at Fort Bragg, was part of the team that carried out the predawn raid in Caracas that led to Maduro's apprehension. Court records show Van Dyke faces counts of wire fraud, commodities fraud, misuse of non-public government information and other charges.

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A dark room at the RAF Exhibit Gallery showing multiple screens of FRAMERATE: Desert Pulse, displaying plants. Prominent colors are green and purple.

Caitlin O'Hara for NPR

A new art exhibit at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix brings a vibrant twist to Arizona's unique desert landscape through an innovative collaboration with the London-based artist group ScanLAB Projects. "Framerate: Desert Pulse" features detailed 3D scans of Arizona's iconic saguaro and other cacti, such as prickly pear, ocotillo and cholla, also known as a "jumping cactus." The exhibit also captures a housing development coming to life at the edge of the desert, a dairy farm crowded with cattle and Chase Field crowded with baseball fans on opening day. Attendees can experience the imagery of desert plants projected onto massive screens outside among the garden's plants. The images are also in a room with screens covering the walls, floor and ceiling. The presentation is both a celebration of the Sonoran Desert and a cautionary tale about humanity's impact on it, said Matthew Shaw, co-founder of ScanLAB Projects. The visually stunning show also serves as a tool for scientists to better conduct conservation work.

Weekend picks

Elle Fanning surrounded by bubbles in a still from “Margo's Got Money Troubles."

Apple TV

Check out what NPR is watching, reading and listening to this weekend:

🍿 Movies: Michael, a new biopic about the King of Pop's rise, is poised to be a box office hit this weekend. This week, NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour is taking a deep dive into Michael Jackson's ever-evolving legacy and the forces that have shaped it, including the child sex abuse allegations he and his family have always denied.

📺 TV: In Margo's Got Money Troubles, Elle Fanning plays a promising first-year student at a California community college whose professor praises her work, has an affair with her, gets her pregnant, then ghosts her. And that is just the first episode of the show’s wild ride.

📚 Books: Fortesa Latifi’s Like, Follow, Subscribe: Influencer Kids and the Cost of a Childhood Online explores what drives parents to become family influencers. Freelance critic Ilana Masad calls it a must-read for anyone interested in a magnified look at the inner workings of influencerdom.

🎵 Music: Noah Kahan’s fourth album, The Great Divide, takes listeners on a journey through themes of absence and presence, as well as stasis and mobility. NPR Music's Ann Powers says that Kahan taps into various perspectives for the new music: his old friends, family members, his steadfast wife and even neighbors whose dilemmas resonate with him but are far from his own.

3 things to know before you go

Mario Tama/Getty Images North America

1

Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders voted yesterday to approve a $110 billion merger with Paramount Skydance. But it's not a done deal; federal and international regulators still need to sign off on it before it's finalized.

2

Meta will lay off 8,000 workers, or 10% of its staff, in May, according to an internal memo published by Bloomberg and confirmed by a Meta spokesperson to NPR.

3

Michael Tilson Thomas, the renowned conductor and composer who led the San Francisco Symphony for 25 years and elevated its reputation to world-class, died on Wednesday. He was 81 years old.

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This newsletter was edited by Suzanne Nuyen.

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