At least a dozen Justice Department employees involved in prosecuting President Trump received dismissal notices, humanitarian parole programs are ending for 1.4 legal immigrants to the US and a Chinese company has developed a free competitor to ChatGPT. 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 Eric Westervelt, Anna Yukhananov, Kevin Drew, Janaya Williams and Alice Woelfle. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Claire Murashima. We get engineering support from Arthur Laurent and our technical director is Zac Coleman. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy

The fall of Syria's leader in December opened the doors to a vast network of detention centers and prisons across the country, uncovering further evidence of the true scale of killings under former president Bashar al-Assad. On this episode of The Sunday Story, NPR's Ruth Sherlock takes us to a notorious prison where thousands were detained and killed, and she visits a suspected mass gravesite outside Damascus. She meets former prisoners and those forced to play a role in what has been called the regime's "machinery of death." Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy