Transcript of Search and Rescue in Venezuela, Election Security, Free Childcare New

Countries around the world are rushing aid to Venezuela. Individuals are, too.

The earthquake was another blow to a country that was already straining under multiple crises.

I'm Scott Simon.

I'm Ayesha Rascoe, and this is Up First from NPR News.

Firefighters, hospitals and rescue crews are overwhelmed. Volunteers are pouring in to help.

Also, President Trump wants everyone to provide proof of citizenship before voting. His bill isn't passing, and And that might be a way for him to contest election results this fall.

Democratic socialists are on a roll in New York City, but what's the appetite for progressive policies in the rest of America? Look at New Mexico, where child care is now free for everyone.

So stay with us. We have the news you need to start your weekend.

3 days after a powerful double earthquake struck Venezuela, the country struggles to cope with the aftermath.

The quakes hit within a minute of each other, causing widespread destruction near the capital, Caracas. The government says more than 900 people have been killed and more than 3,000 injured. Thousands more people are missing.

International search and rescue teams are arriving. But limited equipment and an overstretched health system are slowing them down. In some areas, residents are using their bare hands to dig for survivors. John Otis has just arrived in Caracas. John, thanks for being with us.

Thanks for having me, Scott.

You, you have been to Caracas many times before. What were your first impressions as you came in this time?

Yeah, well, the fact is we had to drive in all the way the Colombian border into Caracas, and that's quite telling because, you know, the international airport just outside of the city was badly damaged in the earthquake and it remains closed. So we really had no other way to get here. And as for Caracas, many areas were spared, but parts of some neighborhoods like Altamira were devastated. Now that's the sound of rescue workers using a chainsaw to cut a tunnel through the remains of this high-rise apartment building that collapsed Nearby were piles of mangled rebar and a crushed car. For their part, many survivors of quake-damaged buildings are too scared to sleep indoors, and so they're camping in the Altamira Park. I saw one couple curled up in blankets sleeping with their pet poodle next to a sculpture in the park. For me, this is an especially surreal sight. Altamira is this beautiful upscale neighborhood. I've stayed here on previous reporting trips, and it's, it's just really sad to see.

John, that critical window of 48 to 72 hours to find survivors is obviously closing. Aid is arriving from abroad and locally, but is it enough?

Well, while we were driving into Caracas, we passed convoy after convoy of aid trucks trying to get to the disaster zone. But one problem is that the government lacks heavy equipment like bulldozers and backhoes. That's partly why you see a lot of average folks taking matters into their own hands. One of them is Carlos Ramirez, a lawyer whose aunt and cousin were in that high-rise that collapsed. So he's wearing a yellow helmet and gloves, and he's saying that he's been here for the past 3 days helping to remove debris and also praying that his loved ones somehow survive.

John, what's the government's response been so far?

Acting President Delcy Rodriguez and her team appear to be doing what they can with very limited resources. But these limitations are also the government's own fault. Remember, Rodriguez took power after U.S. troops ousted President Nicolás Maduro back in January, and she was Maduro's vice president as well as a big, big cheerleader for his authoritarian regime for many years. And that regime ended up strangling the country's democracy and badly mismanaging its economy. One reason there's a shortage of heavy equipment is because so many Venezuelan factories have shut down. Hospitals were defunded, and They lack everything from antibiotics to, in some cases, even running water. Rescue workers and firefighters lack protective gear. So in the end, previous mistakes are making it a lot harder for the government to deal with this ongoing disaster.

John Otis in Caracas, thank you so much.

Thanks, Scott.

For months, years even, President Trump has complained that lawmakers in Congress aren't taking election security seriously enough, and this week he refused to sign a bipartisan plan to bring down housing costs because of it.

The standoff centers on a bill called the Save America Act. We have NPR voting correspondent Miles Parks with us. Miles, thanks so much for being with us.

Hey, good morning, Scott.

So the SAVE Act, as it's called, is not new. President mentioned it in this year's State of State of the Union in February, falsely accusing Democrats of fighting it because he said they wanted to cheat in elections. And their policy is so bad that the only way they can get elected is to cheat. And we're going to stop it. We have to stop it, John. Miles, what would this bill actually do?

So honestly, it's a pretty major election overhaul, which is notable considering, Scott, primaries are already underway and we're just a few months away from the general election, the midterms. The biggest change would be on the registration side of things. It would require people to provide proof of citizenship when they register to vote, which might not sound like a big deal. Most Americans believe only citizens should vote in American elections, but having the right documentation to prove that citizenship is not a given. We're talking about a passport or a birth certificate in most cases, and research has shown that roughly 1 in 10 Americans could potentially have trouble coming up with those documents if this bill were to go into effect.

And, and is that why Republicans haven't been able to pass the bill? It narrowly passed the House.

It's definitely part of it. Also, noncitizen voting has never been found to be a major issue in American elections, so Democrats have been universally opposed, and Republicans would need to blow up the Senate filibuster to overcome that opposition, which does not have broad support in that caucus. Honestly, part of the reason for that is that this legislation does not seem drafted to garner wide support.

Now, now, fill that out a little bit for us.

So experts I've talked to say if this bill was narrowly focused specifically at requiring photo ID at polling places, for instance, that has wide support from voters. That could have potentially put some political pressure on, especially on some swing-state Democrats. But President Trump has pushed the maximalist version of this thing, at one point saying it should include restrictions to vote by mail, at one point saying it should include provisions regarding transgender athletes in sports. So not only are those controversial policies, but conservatives have also traditionally been opposed to any policies that would federalize election administration in the way that this bill would.

But President Trump has said he thinks the country should nationalize voting. How widely held is that belief among Republicans?

It is not widely held at all. Senator Mitch McConnell, for instance, has spent most of his career fighting against efforts to move the U.S. towards a more top-down election system, but the SAVE Act would do that. Derek Muller, an election law professor at Notre Dame, said earlier this year that if the SAVE Act were passed, it would be one of the most significant nationalizations of elections in American history.

Why is President Trump continuing to push this if his own party isn't behind him?

That is the question that voting officials have been noodling on for much of the year, Scott. Whether it's with this bill or the executive orders the president has tried to push through, which have mostly been blocked by the courts so far, voting officials see this as part of a bigger plan to cast doubt on upcoming elections should the president not like the results. I was at an event this past week with Gabriel Sterling. He's a Republican election official in Georgia that some listeners may remember from 2020 pushing back on President Trump's election claims then. He said all signs are pointing to Republicans losing ground in Congress this year and then Trump contesting the results.

The reality of this is my Republicans, my team, are going to lose seats, but they're going to say, if we'd won these lawsuits, if we'd passed Save America Act, if we did all these things, we would have won. And that's what they're building towards. So it's a win-win either way.

Another person at this event was Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. She's a Democrat who's also running for governor there. She said she's worried that all this noise about the rules and potential restrictions to voting will mean that some people just say, you know, man, this does not seem worth it this year.

So much of the work to undermine democracy is about creating this narrative that democracy can't be trusted, so that even if you lose in court, people have lost so much faith in the system that they give up on it and walk away. Which we know when it comes to undermining democracies writ large in history, it's when citizens lose faith in their democracy that democracies die.

Benson told me that people need to reject that and still turn up to vote this November.

NPR voting correspondent Miles Parks, thanks so much.

Thanks, Scott.

New Mexico is establishing a system of free child care for nearly anyone in the state. It's a popular, if progressive, idea for this largely rural state.

Reporter Katarina Barton has been following the program's rollout in Santa Fe and joins us now. Welcome.

Thanks for having me.

New Mexico rolled out what they're calling universal free childcare in November. How's that supposed to work?

Well, the idea is that any parent in the state, regardless of how much money they make, can have the state pay 100% for the cost of childcare for kids up to 13. The only requirement is that a parent has to either be in school or working or looking for work.

Childcare is a huge burden on parents across the country, and, and there have been some other states that have talked about trying to provide free childcare. How is New Mexico able to pay for this?

Mostly from oil and gas tax revenues. New Mexico is America's number 2 crude oil producer, behind only neighboring Texas. So this probably isn't an avenue for most states. Back in 2020, New Mexico made a trust fund that earmarked some of that revenue for early childhood education. It started with $300 million, and now that's grown to $11 billion. The state has slowly been expanding its childcare subsidies over the years, raising the income limits, and now it's open to everyone.

So it sounds like money is not an issue here. How's the system working so far?

Well, the program has been popular. So popular, in fact, that the main challenge is that there's not enough availability of childcare. The state isn't giving exact numbers for how big the supply and demand gap is, but since the state started, they say that they've added licensed childcare capacity for nearly 4,000 kids. But we also know that before this program started, it was estimated that there were about 15,000 kids under the age of 6 in New Mexico who couldn't find childcare. There's 6 counties that have the highest gap between supply and demand, and one of those is Santa Fe County. Here's Lilia Doyle, a mother in Santa Fe County. She says that her 2-year-old son has been on a waitlist at 6 different daycares since November. And she works as a librarian. She'd like to go back to work, but she needs to find childcare first. And she says the process has been really tedious. She wants to find an open spot for her son, but she also wants to vet some of the daycares. And she says it's been a lot of work.

I'm so thankful we have universal childcare, but I just think it needs some tweaking to be 100% effective for parents.

How many kids are on the waiting list?

Well, state officials say they don't have that number because that's specific to each childcare center. But in an interview, the Early Childhood Education and Care Department that runs the program told me that they have this ambitious goal to close that gap in the next 1 to 2 years.

What else is the state working on to make the program, I guess, sustainable going forward?

I think there's still a lot to flesh out. The department that runs the program is in the process of making new rules to codify the program with a bill that was signed into law earlier this year. They're working on incentives to make it easier for new childcare centers to open. And recently the state changed zoning regulations for home-based childcare centers. And at the start of the program, they raised the rates that childcare centers are getting per kid, and they're now working on increasing wages for people working in those centers. They're also giving loans to providers to build and expand their centers, which is also adding more capacity. So there's lots of capacity building going on.

That's Caterina Barton, a reporter in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Thank you so much for speaking with us today.

Thanks for having me.

And that's Up First for Saturday, June 20th, 2026. I'm Scott Simon.

And I'm Ayesha Rascoe. Dave Mistich. Produced today's podcast along with Samantha Balaban, Gabe O'Connor, and Ryan Bank. Diana Douglas was our editor with help from Tara Neal, Benjamin Swayze, and Eric Whitney.

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He got engineering support from Jay Sizz and Simon Laszlo Jansen.

Shannon Rhodes is our senior supervising editor. Our executive producer is Evie Stone, and Catherine Laidlaw is our deputy managing Tomorrow on The Sunday Story, the secret life of a stolen Van Gogh painting. You're going to want to tune in. Check your closet. See if you've got it. Thanks for listening and for supporting your local NPR station. If you need to find yours, and of course we all do, go to stations.npr.org.

Well, if you have that Van Gogh, think about donating to your local—

Oh, that would be so nice. At least a scintilla of it, don't you think?

Yes, please.

Just rip it in half and give half to your local— no, I'm kidding. You don't rip a Van Gogh.

No, no, but give us a little piece of it. We okay.

And a little corner of it.

Yeah.