Middle East negotiations; Eric Swalwell; FACE Act : NPR

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Today’s top stories

President Trump announced that U.S. talks with Iran might resume within the next two days. This comes as Israel conducts negotiations for other Middle East wars. In Washington, D.C., yesterday, Israel and Lebanon held historic direct diplomatic talks — the first of this kind since 1993. Lebanon wants a ceasefire, but Israel won’t agree until the Iranian-backed Lebanese militia Hezbollah disarms. Israel and Hezbollah continued to trade fire during the talks. Both sides agreed to more talks in a few weeks in Washington.

• 🎧 The U.S. is currently one week into a two-week ceasefire. The chances of a resolution are complicated by the fact that Iran wants the peace deal to include an end to the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, NPR’s Daniel Estrin tells Up First. Today, the U.S. military’s Central Command announced its completion of the blockade of Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. says about 90% of Iran’s economy relies on international trade by sea, and now that pathway is completely cut off. Estrin says a question remains as to whether this form of economic pressure on Iran is enough to bridge the very wide gaps between the U.S. and Iran.
• 🎧 The International Monetary Fund warns that the global economy is at risk of a recession amid the ongoing conflict in Iran. The IMF singled out the United Kingdom as one of the hardest-hit economies because it imports so much gas and oil, says NPR’s Fatima Al-Kassab. U.K. households will already be $500 worse off this year due to the war, according to the think tank The Resolution Foundation. Some analysts say that even if peace is achieved tomorrow, the shock to the system could take weeks or even months to recover from.

Note: This story includes descriptions of sexual violence.

A Los Angeles woman yesterday leveled what may be the most serious allegations yet against former Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell. Swalwell formally resigned from Congress yesterday as a second woman accused him of rape. Swalwell, who also suspended his campaign for California governor over the weekend, has denied all allegations of sexual assault and misconduct.

• 🎧 Lonna Drewes said at a news conference with her lawyers that she believes Swalwell drugged and raped her in a West Hollywood hotel room in 2018, Marisa Lagos of NPR network station KQED says. Drewes said she plans to report the alleged assault to law enforcement. She recounted that she met Swalwell socially on three separate occasions. She alleges that on their last encounter, she consumed one glass of wine before going to his hotel room so he could retrieve something he needed. Drewes says she became so incapacitated that she couldn’t move. Swalwell, through his attorney, denied the allegations, labeling them a “calculated and transparent political hit job.” California Gov. Gavin Newsom has scheduled a special election for Aug. 18 to fill Swalwell’s congressional seat.

The Justice Department published a report yesterday accusing the Biden administration of unfairly using a federal law designed to protect reproductive health clinics from violence to target Christians who oppose abortion. This report is the first from the agency’s “Weaponization Working Group,” a task force formed under the Trump administration to investigate perceived wrongdoing in the Biden administration. The group alleges that Biden’s Justice Department used the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act to launch biased prosecutions and lawsuits against conservatives and Christian anti-abortion advocates. The act was established more than 30 years ago to prevent acts of violence, obstruction and property damage against reproductive health services.

Virginia has become the latest state to join a movement to make the winner of the popular vote the president. Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed a bill this week to join the National Popular Vote Compact, a coalition of states committed to awarding their electoral votes to the popular vote winner. Eighteen states plus the District of Columbia now support the compact, totaling 222 electoral votes. But it won’t take effect until enough states have signed up to reach the required 270 electoral votes needed to elect a president. If that happens, legal challenges would likely await.

Watch this

Dave Chappelle talks during an interview with NPR.

Mito Habe-Evans/NPR

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Mito Habe-Evans/NPR

Go face to face with the person of the moment. NPR’s Newsmakers video podcast brings the biggest names in politics, business, sports, arts, and culture out of the headlines and into the interview chair to discuss the mark they’re making on the world. Follow the Newsmakers podcast or subscribe to NPR’s YouTube channel to get new episodes as soon as they’re available.

Dave Chappelle is one of the most influential stand-up comedians in the world. His shows have sold out, and he has a prestigious Mark Twain award to his name. Now, he has a new title: landlord of a public radio station in Yellow Springs, Ohio. He spent $15 million of his own money to give WYSO a new home. The comedian speaks with Morning Edition‘s Michel Martin about his purchase and why he decided to move his family to the small Ohio town. He also discusses free speech and the purpose of comedy. Martin and Chappelle spoke with each other at WYSO’s brand-new station under the exposed beams of the 150-year-old building, just a day after the ribbon-cutting.

Watch the interview now on YouTube or listen to the Newsmakers episode later today.

Deep dive

AI lab Anthropic announced this week that it had developed a powerful new model the company believes could “reshape cybersecurity.” It said that its latest model, Mythos Preview, was able to find “high-severity vulnerabilities, including some in every major operating system and web browser.”

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Patrick Sison/AP

The AI lab Anthropic announced this week that it has developed a new artificial intelligence model, called Mythos Preview, that could “reshape cybersecurity.” The model detects “high-severity vulnerabilities, including some in every major operating system and web browser,” the company said. Mythos Preview is also better at identifying ways to exploit the vulnerabilities it finds, which could be malicious if placed in the wrong hands. For now, to secure the critical software, the company is limiting access to about 50 select companies and organizations.

• ➡️ The misuse risk is too high to release this particular model to the general public, but Anthropic says it will release other related models.
• ➡️ Before Mythos Preview’s limited release, the cybersecurity community grappled with the growing capabilities of commercially available advanced AI models. Developers are rushing to patch security vulnerabilities identified by AI, while security experts are concerned over the potential consequences of these technologies spreading without safeguards.
• ➡️ In the summer of 2025, HackerOne, a platform that helps manage security reporting, surveyed hackers. It found that nearly 60% of respondents were using AI, learning about it or studying how to audit AI and machine learning systems.
• ➡️ AI excels at finding bugs and security flaws but struggles with fixing them, says Daniel Stenberg, the lead developer of cURL, a 30-year-old open-source data transfer tool. The difficulty arises because bugs and their solutions are rarely straightforward. In software development, making judgment calls often takes longer than writing the code.

3 things to know before you go

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1. Direct-to-consumer blood testing is on the rise as health-conscious individuals order their own lab work. While this empowers patients to take charge of their health, the results come without explanations, often leaving patients with more questions than answers.
2. The U.S. has seen a historic, sustained drop in overdose deaths. But this trend could be threatened by a changing drug landscape, as gangs and cartels shift to producing synthetic substances with industrial chemicals.
3. NPR’s Word of the Week, “discombobulated,” describes an unsettling feeling. It may sound fancy, but it’s actually the product of American jokesters who seem to have joined a 19th-century trend of inventing grand, humorous-sounding words.

This newsletter was edited by Suzanne Nuyen.