Federal Worker Surveillance, Trump's Team In Europe, Elon Musk And Mars

Up First from NPR

NPR

Daily News, News

4.5 • 52.8K Ratings

🗓️ 12 February 2025

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Employees at the General Services Administration are facing massive staff cuts and threats of near-constant monitoring, three top Trump administration officials are in Europe this week talking with European leaders about transatlantic issues, and proponents of going to Mars see an opportunity in Elon Musk's close relationship with President Trump.

Want more comprehensive 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 Brett Neely, Ryland Barton, Gisele Grayson, Janaya Williams and Alice Woelfle. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from David Greenberg. And our technical director is Carleigh Strange.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Workers will be under heavy surveillance of the General Services Administration.
0:07.2	The agency that manages almost all government contracts is also having its budget cut in half.
0:12.7	Is this the plan for other agencies too?
0:14.5	I'm A Martinez, that's Leila Fadl, and this is up first from NPR News.
0:21.5	A White House team is traveling through Europe this week.
0:24.4	The vice president, defense secretary, and secretary of state are meeting with European
0:28.3	leaders to discuss transatlantic issues.
0:30.5	What's their main message?
0:32.0	And sending astronauts to Mars is a key goal of Elon Musk, who also has the president's
0:37.4	ear on the subject.
0:38.4	That means the U.S. may become closer than ever to putting a human on the red planet.
0:43.0	This is quite a singular moment for the prospects of getting to Mars.
0:48.0	Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day.
0:56.0	This message comes from Wise, the app for doing things in other currencies.
1:00.7	Sending or spending money abroad, hidden fees may be taking a cut.
1:04.9	With Wise, you can convert between up to 40 currencies at the mid-market exchange rate.
1:10.3	Visit wise.com. TNCs apply.
1:13.6	This message comes from Monday.com. Work management platforms. Red tape, endless adoption time,
1:20.0	IT bottlenecks. And after all that, nobody really uses them. But what if you didn't hate your work
1:25.6	platform? What if you actually loved it? Monday.com
1:29.0	work management platform is different. You can make any changes you want and adapt it to your needs in an instant.
1:35.6	No admin middleman. That's why people actually love using it. Monday.com, the first work platform
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 1 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.