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--:-- Michelle Martin: I finally got a good night's sleep. Really? How come? How? How'd you do it? Well, I mean, it wasn't enough hours. Whatever you can tell me. No, I slept. I slept. Well, what you do is you sleep badly for several nights in a row. And then you're so tired. I'm so tired. You crash. He has to, yeah. Exactly. Works every time. Well. I get that. Not quite every time.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: President Trump is pressuring Ukraine's president with personal attacks. Trump called Zelensky a dictator. Zelensky accused Trump of spreading misinformation. They both agree the war in Ukraine should end, so why are they so far apart on how to get there?
--:-- Michelle Martin: Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency claims to have trimmed billions of dollars from the federal budget. What Musk and Doge are doing is more cosmetic, symbolic changes that won't save money but might sound good. Our correspondent added up the receipts and found a different number. What's the real bottom line?
--:-- Steve Inskeep: And Hamas released the bodies of four Israeli hostages today. What's known about them and the circumstances in which they died? Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day.
--:-- Michelle Martin: This message comes from BetterHelp. It's only human to ask others for advice, like turning to your barista, hairdresser, or a taxi driver for life advice. But when you're looking for help about relationships, anxiety, depression, or other clinical issues, they may not have all the right answers. Instead, get guidance from a licensed therapist online with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash NPR for 10% off your first month.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: This message comes from Mint Mobile. If you're tired of spending hundreds on big wireless bills, bogus fees, and free perks, Mint Mobile might be right for you with plans starting from $15 a month. Shop plans today at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for a 3-month 5GB plan required. New customer offer for first 3 months only. Then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details.
--:-- Michelle Martin: This message comes from Lisa. Lisa mattresses are meticulously designed and assembled in the USA for exceptional quality. And each mattress is designed with specific sleep positions and feel preferences in mind. Plus, they back it all up with free shipping, easy returns, and a 100-night sleep trial. Visit Lisa.com for 25% off mattresses, plus get an extra $50 off with promo code NPR. That's L-E-E-S-A dot com, promo code NPR.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: President Trump is escalating his personal attacks on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, calling him a dictator. Trump is pressuring the Ukrainian to submit to peace talks that so far have not included Ukraine. The U.S. also pressed Zelensky to sign an agreement that would share Ukraine's minimal rights with the United States. Zelensky has said Ukraine needs to be included in any negotiations, and it's in this context that the American president made a stream of remarks about the Ukrainian leader.
--:-- Michelle Martin: NPR White House correspondent Franco Ordonez is here to tell us more about this. Good morning, Franco.
--:-- Franco Ordonez: Good morning, Michelle. So tell us more about these dictator comments. What's the backstory here?
--:-- Michelle Martin: Yeah, I mean, what Trump called Zelensky a dictator without elections, basically echoing Russian talking points that Zelensky is an illegitimate leader and that Ukraine needs new elections.
--:-- Franco Ordonez: Now, in that same social media post, Trump also mocks Zelensky as a, quote, modestly successful comedian who basically tricked the U.S. into spending billions and billions of dollars on the war. Trump also appeared to blame Zelensky for the Russian invasion. All this as Zelensky has raised concerns about as Steve said Ukraine being excluded from U negotiations with Russia over ending the war
--:-- Michelle Martin: Here Trump talking about it on Tuesday Today I heard oh well we weren't invited. Well, you've been there for three years. You should have ended it three years. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.
--:-- Franco Ordonez: Now, just to be very, very clear, Ukraine did not start the war. Russia did. But Trump also suggested that Zelensky's popularity had fallen as low as 4%. It's actually over 40%, 50%. So, okay, it's over 50%.
--:-- Michelle Martin: I think it would be helpful here to go back into the history dating back to the first Trump administration. I'm talking about the history between these two men. Remind us of that. And how does this play into what's happening now?
--:-- Franco Ordonez: Yeah, I mean, it was that first call with Zelensky back in 2019, where Trump asked for a favor to dig up dirt on Vice President Biden that kicked off Trump's first impeachment. I did speak with Andrea Kendall-Taylor at the Center for New American Security. And she says Trump never really respected Zelensky and continues to carry a lot of negative baggage about him and Ukraine. That definitely colors the lens through which he is approaching these negotiations with Russia and his sidelining of Zelensky in the process.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Now, of course, it's a complex relationship. And like many of Trump's relationships with foreign leaders, it can really be hot or cold depending on the circumstances. How is Zelensky responding to these latest attacks? I mean, very carefully. He's long used flattery to try to win favor with Trump, but he's been pushing back more recently.
--:-- Franco Ordonez: You know, after Trump questioned Zelensky's poll numbers, Zelensky told reporters that as much as he respects Trump, the U.S. president appears to be amplifying Russian disinformation.
--:-- Michelle Martin: What's next? What are we looking for?
--:-- Franco Ordonez: Well, the French president Emmanuel Macron will be in Washington next week to meet with Trump. Also, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is also expected to visit. Now, like many leaders, Macron and others are concerned about Europe not being part of these negotiations with Russia. The big worry across Europe is that even if a deal is reached, it won't be lasting and that Russia will likely invade again.
--:-- Michelle Martin: That is NPR's Franco Ordonez. Franco, thank you.
--:-- Franco Ordonez: Thank you, Michelle.
--:-- Michelle Martin: The Trump administration has posted a new online tracker that lists what it describes as the dollars saved by the Department of Government Efficiency. That is the cost-cutting effort championed by Elon Musk and President Trump. Musk made a stream of claims on social media in recent weeks about big savings. A Doge website kept promising receipts, and this week the website published some, but those receipts add up to far less in savings than claimed. NPR's Stephen Fowler did the math. He is here with us now to tell us what he found. Good morning, Stephen.
--:-- Stephen Fowler: Good morning. Okay, so what does this online Doge document claim to track? So Monday, a savings page on doge.gov went live. It says there's been savings so far of $55 billion. What's included in that? Doge says things like, quote, fraud detection, deletion, workforce reductions, programmatic changes, and regulatory savings.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Exactly how those changes fit into the overall savings estimate is still TBD. They promise to keep adding more information. What we do have shared for now is a list of some of the government contracts Doge says were canceled in recent days, what they call a wall of receipts that adds up to about $16 billion in alleged savings.
--:-- Stephen Fowler: Important to note here that Elon Musk, the tech mogul, and also I want to point out a government contractor who heads up this group insists that the work is transparent So two questions here Is it transparent And now that you've been reviewing these contracts how do their numbers stack up with what you have found
--:-- Michelle Martin: The Doge website is actually less transparent about these contracts than other public government data sources. So I had to search through 130,000 plus contracts that have been changed from January 20th to Monday to see if I could match them up with what Doge shared. But the claims weren't off by just a little bit, but rather overstated by billions.
--:-- Stephen Fowler: Half of these savings claimed in these receipts comes from what Doge said was actually a typo entered into the federal contract database a few years ago that made a listing worth up to $8 million look like $8 billion. That typo was fixed in the system a few weeks ago, but only fixed on the Doge website yesterday.
--:-- Michelle Martin: I will note here, Doge has not responded to multiple requests from NPR to get clarity about their process.
--:-- Stephen Fowler: Okay, that's a pretty big typo, Stephen. Okay, so what about the rest of the claims? Here's three big things I found. One, more than half of the contracts listed haven't actually been canceled yet. Two, a third of the entries don't actually result in any savings by Doge's own accounting. These are contracts that were already maxed out and couldn't see any more spending in the future. Three, the terminations I could verify only add up to about $2 billion saved, mainly through cuts that accompany the attempted dismantling of the Education Department, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and USAID.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Okay, so a purported $55 billion in savings shrinks to $16 billion, which upon further examination you found is just $2 billion. Well, one could argue that's still a lot of money, though.
--:-- Stephen Fowler: Well, for you or me or even a nice business, yes, but the federal government spent more than $6.7 trillion, with a T and a lot more zeros in the last fiscal year.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Here's Jessica Riedel with the Manhattan Institute. She studied ways to cut wasteful spending from the budget from a conservative policy perspective. It has to be done legally through Congress, and it has to be done competently by people who understand federal budget and accounting. And what Musk and Doge are doing is more cosmetic, symbolic changes that won't save money but might sound good.
--:-- Jessica Riedel: Basically, Riedel says any meaningful cuts to federal spending has to come from Congress having hard debates over how to do it.
--:-- Stephen Fowler: Quickly, Stephen, if meaningful savings have to be achieved through difficult conversations in Congress and the Doge effort isn't actually saving much money, what is the point?
--:-- Michelle Martin: Well, it's not about pinching pennies. It's about a manifestation of President Trump's overarching vision to remake the federal government by making it a lot smaller and a lot more aligned with his worldview.
--:-- Stephen Fowler: That is NPR Stephen Fowler. Stephen, thank you.
--:-- Stephen Fowler: Thank you.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Hamas has released the bodies of what it says are four Israeli hostages back to Israel, including the body of a mother and her two young sons. They will undergo forensic testing in Israel to confirm their identity. This is the first time that Hamas has released the bodies of hostages under the current ceasefire. For more, we're joined by NPR's Kat Lonsdorf in Tel Aviv. Good morning, Kat.
--:-- Kat Lonsdorf: Yeah, yeah, it is. It's pretty somber here. So what can you tell us about the remains that were released? Who were they?
--:-- Michelle Martin: So Hamas says that they are the bodies of Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, Ariel and Kaffir, as well as the body of 84-year-old Oden Lifshitz. All four of them were taken hostage in the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on southern Israel.
--:-- Kat Lonsdorf: Shiri's husband, Yarden, was also taken hostage with the rest of the family on that day. The Bibas family had become a symbol here in Israel of the plight of the hostages in Gaza. The two children, ages four and nine months when they were captured, were the youngest hostages taken.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Do we know how they died?
--:-- Kat Lonsdorf: Well, Hamas says all four were killed by Israeli strikes during their time in captivity in Gaza. Israel says it will take the bodies to an Israeli forensic institute here in Tel Aviv, which will examine them and provide official identification and also seek to determine the cause of death.
--:-- Michelle Martin: This is the first time that Hamas has handed over bodies during this war. The previous releases have been of hostages who were alive.
--:-- Kat Lonsdorf: So would you mind just describing the scene? Like, what was it like both in Gaza and in Israel? Was it different?
--:-- Michelle Martin: Yeah, it was definitely more somber and much less celebratory on both sides. In Gaza, large crowds gathered in Khan Yunis in the south. Masked Hamas gunmen presided over a ceremony on a stage with four coffins draped in black.
--:-- Kat Lonsdorf: There were large posters on both sides of the stage in Hebrew and English. One depicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a fanged vampire. Another said that if Israel resumed the war, more hostages would come home in coffins.
--:-- Michelle Martin: In Israel, unlike previous releases, the Hamas ceremony was not broadcast on Israeli TV, and Israeli media outlets did not publish images from it out of respect for the families.
--:-- Kat Lonsdorf: Once the caskets were in Israeli custody, they were then draped with Israeli flags, and then they were driven from Gaza to Tel Aviv, and large crowds gathered along the route to show solidarity and respect.
--:-- Michelle Martin: So you've obviously been following the ceasefire deal very closely. What's expected to happen next in the coming days and in the ceasefire deal?
--:-- Kat Lonsdorf: Yeah, so Saturday is going to be a big day. The remaining six live hostages that Hamas has committed to releasing in this first phase will be released, including two have been held for around a decade. and they'll be released in exchange for more than 600 Palestinians released from Israeli jails.
--:-- Michelle Martin: This first phase of the deal ends on March 2nd, and so far talks for the next phase haven't started yet. They were supposed to start weeks ago. So we're really just waiting to see what happens with that.
--:-- Kat Lonsdorf: Meanwhile, there still will be dozens of Israeli hostages in Gaza. Around half of them are believed to be alive.
--:-- Michelle Martin: That is NPR's Kat Lonsdorf. Kat, thank you.
--:-- Kat Lonsdorf: Thank you, Michelle.
--:-- Michelle Martin: And that's Up First for Thursday, February 20th. I'm Michelle Martin. And I'm Steve Hinskeep.
--:-- Steve Hinskeep: Listen, make your next listen. Consider this, or at least consider it. The team behind NPR's All Things Considered goes deep into a single news story and gets you deep in 15 minutes. Listen now on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Today's episode of Up First was edited by Dana Farrington, Padmananda Rama, Didi Skanky, Rina Advani, and Jenea Williams. It was produced by Ziad Bunch, Nia Dumas, and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Stacey Abbott, and our technical director is Carly Strange. We hope you'll join us again tomorrow.
--:-- Steve Hinskeep: This message comes from Progressive Insurance and the Name Your Price tool. It helps you find car insurance options in your budget. Try it today at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states.
--:-- Michelle Martin: This message comes from Charles Schwab. When it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices, like full-service wealth management and advice when you need it. You can also invest on your own and trade on Think or Swim. Visit schwab.com to learn more.
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