Good morning. You’re reading the Up First newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox, and listen to the Up First podcast for all the news you need to start your day.
Today’s top stories
A French court has indicted billionaire Telegram founder Pavel Durov on multiple charges including spreading child abuse images, drug trafficking and failure to comply with law enforcement requests. He is accused of running the platform where these crimes took place, not committing the crimes himself. Durov co-founded the popular messaging app in 2013. The charges come days after his surprise arrest at an airport outside of Paris.
Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov, in Jakarta, Indonesia in 2017.
Tatan Syuflana/AP
hide caption
toggle caption
Tatan Syuflana/AP
- 🎧 Durov could face up to a decade in prison, which could be the harshest action taken to date against a social media chief, NPR’s Rebecca Rosman tells Up First. Telegram users typically find the service attractive due to its limited oversight of what they can say. This has made the app a favorite tool for far-right extremist groups, terrorist organizations and criminal gangs. Investigators say Durov failed to cooperate with them, which would have helped them shut down the illegal operations. He is now under judicial supervision and banned from leaving French territory.
Former President Donald Trump shared a TikTok video yesterday including footage that likely violates federal law against using military cemeteries for campaigning purposes. The video was posted after NPR reported Trump campaign staffers had a physical altercation Monday with an Arlington National Cemetery staffer who was trying to enforce restrictions during a remembrance ceremony. Only cemetery staff are authorized to take photographs or film in the area.
- 🎧 NPR’s Stephen Fowler says the Gold Star families that invited Trump gave him approval for a videographer and photographer to document the emotional moment, but families don’t have the power to suspend the rules. NPR also learned the family of a Green Beret whose headstone was visible in Trump’s footage didn’t give permission to be included. A Trump campaign representative said the Arlington staffer was “clearly suffering from a mental health episode.” JD Vance, Trump’s vice presidential nominee, said yesterday that Vice President Harris could “go to hell” over the Afghanistan withdrawal and blamed reporters for the controversy.
- ➡️ A solemn 14-acre section of the cemetery is at the center of this controversy. Here’s what to know about Section 60, which contains roughly 900 servicemembers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Trump and many other GOP politicians continue to insist, despite a lack of evidence, that a wave of noncitizens will sway the election for Democrats. It’s illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections and there’s no credible evidence that it happens in significant numbers. But these false claims are being used as pretext to take actions that could raise obstacles for some voters.
- 🎧 At least four states with Republican leadership are announcing new processes and efforts to remove noncitizens from the voter rolls, NPR’s Jude Joffe-Block says. She found in her reporting that these efforts have swept up U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote. Maintaining voter rolls is a critical election safeguard and federal law says it can’t happen within 90 days of an election. Advocacy groups have asked Tennessee and Alabama to halt sending letters to people they suspect are noncitizens, saying it’s violating federal law. Tennessee later said people who received letters wouldn’t be purged from voter rolls. Alabama’s secretary of state told NPR anyone who got a letter and is a citizen can vote on Election Day with proof of citizenship.
Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, are expected to sit down for a joint interview tonight on CNN. It’s the first interview Harris will give since President Biden dropped out of the race in July. Republicans have accused her of trying to dodge the press to avoid tough questions. This interview may be one of the first times she’s pressed on her own policies and how she would govern differently than Biden.
From our hosts
This essay was written by Michel Martin, Morning Edition and Up First host
Lawrence Brown, left, and Paul Robeson, right, performing at Mother A.M.E. Zion Church, Harlem, New York, 1941.
Sony Classical
hide caption
toggle caption
Sony Classical
We all know there are different kinds of fame. There are people who are famous because they are important — think presidents. Then there are people who are famous for reasons we don’t really understand (looking at you certain reality show stars). And then there are people who we KNOW are important — often because we’ve been told they’re important — but we don’t really know why.
I am embarrassed to tell you that until recently Paul Robeson was in that category for me. I knew he was important because, for one thing, he’s been in every Black History Month calendar I’ve ever had. I knew the bio: athlete, actor, activist, magnificent bass baritone, global star. I knew he had been blackballed during the McCarthy era for his outspokenness on human rights.
But I couldn’t picture him. I couldn’t really see him as a man doing something important in the world the way I could picture, say, Rosa Parks trying to keep her nerves together as she kept her seat on that Montgomery, Alabama bus or Marian Anderson when she sang at the Lincoln Memorial after the DAR barred her from Constitution Hall.
But then this summer I had the chance to see a snippet of film at an exhibition at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Wow. He was magnetic. Could not take your eyes off him.
And now you get to see him — hear him — for yourself. For the first time, all of his recordings will be available in one place in a new book and box set called Paul Robeson: Voice of Freedom. We’ll tell you about it on Morning Edition. I can almost guarantee that you will say what I did:
Wow.
Picture show
Viktoriia Verbeniuk, a Ukrainian American poses for a portrait to celebrate the Ukraine Independence Day on August 24, 2024 in Washington, D.C.
Michael A. McCoy for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Michael A. McCoy for NPR
Dozens of people from the Ukrainian diaspora gathered in Washington, D.C., over the weekend to run in vyshyvankas — the country’s traditional attire. The shirts, typically made of cotton or linen, feature embroidered patterns along the front, collar and sleeves. This was in celebration of Ukraine’s 33rd Independence Day, which marks Ukraine’s split from the former Soviet Union. The event comes as Russia’s full-scale invasion enters its third year.
3 things to know before you go
Authorities were searching a Memphis home for murder suspect Deario Wilkerson when he crashed through the ceiling from the attic space in which he’d been hiding.
U.S. Marshals Service
hide caption
toggle caption
U.S. Marshals Service
- Murder suspect Deario Wilkerson was captured after months on the run after he fell, so to speak, in authorities’ laps. He dropped through the ceiling of the Memphis building where he’d been hiding.
- Scientists say new research shows that matching dinosaur tracks found in modern-day Brazil and Cameroon were made 120 million years ago in an area that once connected the two continents.
- The Federal Aviation Administration grounded SpaceX rockets; one of the company’s Falcon 9 rocket boosters failed yesterday. The grounding comes as four astronauts wait in quarantine for the launch of the historic Polaris Dawn mission.
This newsletter was edited by Suzanne Nuyen.