May 13, 2026

Brittney Melton

up first newsletter writer

Good morning. The classic advice for living a long, healthy life is eating well and exercising, but a new study suggests a different habit: participating more in the arts. Here’s the news we’re following today:

Today’s top stories

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth testifies before the Senate Appropriations Committee. He is wearing a dark gray suit with a black-and-red tie.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The Pentagon now estimates that the cost of the war with Iran is approximately $29 billion. Top defense officials answered questions from Congress yesterday. That price tag, up from the estimated $25 billion two weeks ago, was one of the specifics mentioned during the day's testimony.

🎧 Pentagon officials are not including the cost of repairs to U.S. facilities that have been hit by Iran. Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, informed NPR's Claudia Grisales that these repairs could add at least another $4 billion to the price tag. The Pentagon plans to ask for supplemental funding on top of all this to pay for the war. Now, more than two months into the war, there has been more GOP frustration over the lack of information coming from the White House, Grisales says. She adds that the war is creating political challenges for Republicans as they prepare to face voters this fall who are dissatisfied with the conflict and are seeing daily reminders in the economy.

Dr. Marty Makary resigned as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration yesterday, after 13 months marked by turmoil. During his time in the role, he upset the Make America Healthy Again movement for not advancing its agenda fast enough. People looking for a more traditional approach to FDA regulation, as they were accustomed to before President Trump was elected to a second term, were also displeased by Makary. Trump posted that the acting head of the FDA would be Kyle Diamantas, who had been deputy commissioner for food.

🎧 The final straw for Makary was pressure from the White House to OK flavored vapes, which he didn't agree with, according to a federal health official familiar with the agency's management but not authorized to speak publicly. NPR’s Sydney Lupkin tells Up First that the pressure he was facing had been building for a while and he survived a series of controversies during his time at the FDA. Lupkin adds that Makary was definitely disrupting the agency, which aligns with what the rest of the Trump administration has been trying to do to the federal government. As for Diamantas, he is a lawyer and not a medical doctor. Lupkin says the administration has faced difficulties getting some of its health picks confirmed by the Senate. As a result, it may take some time before a permanent commissioner is in place.

The decline in math and reading scores for students across the U.S. during the pandemic was a continuation of a "learning recession" that started years before COVID-19's arrival. That is according to the Education Scorecard, an annual deep dive into student data from The Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University and Harvard University's Center for Education Policy Research. The new Scorecard, released today and in its fourth year, had several takeaways, including that most states are finally making gains in math. While most states have yet to make gains in reading, those that have all made legislative changes to how it's taught in their schools.

Legal experts say Trump's pardoning of at least 15 former elected officials and co-conspirators with corruption offenses in the last year is undermining the fight against public corruption. Another way the administration is undermining the fight, they say, is by dismantling the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section, which was created after Watergate to investigate and prosecute public corruption and election crimes. Richard Briffault, a professor at Columbia Law School, says that these actions collectively send a message that the administration doesn't think corruption should be treated seriously.

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Deep dive

"Make America Healthy Again" merchandise is sold in front of a bus with President Trump's image.

Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

A fight over a commonly used weed killer is dividing alliances between the Republican Party and Make America Healthy Again voters. The Trump administration says glyphosate is essential to America's farming and food supply. In February, the president issued an executive order to promote increased production of the chemical, which is commonly known as Roundup. MAHA activists have decried it as poison. The group includes health and wellness influencers, vaccine skeptics, anti-pesticide advocates and parents concerned about toxic exposures. They often advocate for fewer food additives and chemicals in the food supply, which requires stricter regulations on the food and chemical industries. Those goals conflict with traditional Republican priorities such as deregulation, limited government and reducing federal spending.

➡️ The division between the administration and MAHA could give Democrats an opportunity to gain support from some disaffected MAHA voters. Many of MAHA's food policy priorities, such as addressing ultra-processed foods and reducing pesticide use, are broadly popular across party lines.
➡️Trump's tariffs have driven up prices for farming machinery. Farmers are also facing higher prices for fuel and nitrogen fertilizer because of the war in Iran. Transitioning away from glyphosate would add another financial stressor.
➡️ Many U.S. farms depend on glyphosate and other pesticides to produce enough crops at an affordable price. Rural policy consultant Brian Reisinger said that while farmers are willing to explore alternative practices, transitioning requires time and money, which most small and midsize farms lack.
➡️ Food and health policies are set by distinct government agencies. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., MAHA movement's top political leader, has limited influence over the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA has scaled back the Clean Water Act and rolled back a Biden-era rule to strengthen air pollution limits, which contradicts MAHA's values.

Picture show

Julien Simonis, program manager for Cacao of Excellence, hovers over halved cocoa beans to smell and inspect them.

Valerio Muscella for NPR

Unlike with wine and its sommeliers or coffee with its Q graders, there hasn't been a standard way to compare the array of cacao beans produced on farms across the tropics until recently. In 2009, the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, a sustainable agriculture nonprofit based in Rome, launched a program called Cacao of Excellence. They enlisted the help of Julien Simonis, a chocolate scientist who now serves as program manager, to develop a standardized method of preparing and evaluating cacao. After years of work, the team now has a process they stand behind, Simonis says that thousands of producers, traders and stakeholders worldwide use it daily. "Harmonizing the way of talking about a food product," Simonis explains, allows buyers and sellers to review, discuss and appreciate the differences among various cacao products. The process could also encourage consumers to pay more for higher-quality chocolate, and some of that revenue could be returned to the farmers. These photos show how the cacao is processed at a lab within the Chocolate Experience Museum in Perugia, about 100 miles north of Rome.

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3 things to know before you go

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and his family in a vehicle.

Department of Transportation/Screenshot by NPR

1

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy returns to his reality television roots with "The Great American Road Trip," a cross-country trip with his family that will debut as an unscripted series ahead of America's 250th birthday in July.

2

A new study in JAMA Network Open estimates that 32 million U.S. children live in homes with firearms and nearly 7 million of those children live in households with at least one unlocked and loaded gun.

3

U.S. domestic air travel has surged in recent years, but short flights of a few hundred miles have declined, according to data gathered by the aviation analytics firm OAG for NPR.

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This newsletter was edited by Suzanne Nuyen and Yvonne Dennis.

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