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Twin babies Lenny and Moishe were born via surrogate in Ukraine, just as Russia invaded the country. Their parents live in Chicago and had been anxiously awaiting the arrival of their new sons.

Rescuers exfiltrated the babies, dodging Russian artillery fire and driving through a snowstorm before finally arriving at a Polish hospital, where new father Alex “Sasha” Spektor met the boys for the first time. But a more difficult journey for the family was just beginning.

NPR’s Ari Shapiro followed up with Spektor and his partner, Irma Nuñez, as they navigated the complicated bureaucratic process of getting their twins from Poland to the United States.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

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Bipartisan members who serve on state and county boards of canvassers in Michigan have an important job: certifying the results of elections, making them official.

In 2020, Former President Trump and his allies urged them not to certify as part of his campaign to undermine and overturn the presidential election, even though Joe Biden won Michigan by more than 154,000 votes.

Since then, local GOP leaders have replaced many of the Republican canvassers who upheld their oaths and voted to certify the results for Biden.

Michelle Voorheis, a Republican canvasser in Genessee County until last year, is one of them. She says she wasn’t re-nominated because she pushed back against false allegations of election fraud.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

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The right to an abortion in the United States appears closer than ever to being eliminated, after a draft of a majority opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked. Should it stand, the court’s ruling wouldn’t ban abortion nationwide, but would leave the decision up to individual states. Many Republican-led states are ready to enact their own bans, should Roe v. Wade be overturned, which could leave tens of millions of people without access to abortions.

NPR congressional correspondent Kelsey Snell, national political correspondent Mara Liasson, and national correspondent Sarah McCammon explain the far-reaching effects this draft could have on abortion-rights advocates, as well as its potential impact on the midterm elections later this year.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

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Cases of COVID-19 have been surging throughout China.

The country has implemented a stringent “zero-COVID” strategy that includes mass testing, limited travel and large-scale lockdowns.

In Shanghai, many residents haven’t been able to leave their homes. It’s an eerie reminder of the lockdowns in Wuhan during the first year of the pandemic.

NPR’s international correspondent Rob Schmitz spoke with two residents of a housing complex in Shanghai about their experiences with the city’s lockdown.

There are some people who are leaving their homes – mainly to enforce China’s “zero-COVID” plan. China has hired tens of thousands of temporary workers to test, isolate and lock down entire cities.

Beijing correspondent Emily Feng spoke to a few of those workers, many of whom are poorly treated and underpaid.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

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Communities of color are the most harshly affected by climate change in the United States. While the importance of environmental justice is becoming more mainstream, too often people in this movement who are Black, Indigenous and people of color are overlooked and left out of conversations about how to solve the crisis.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, a marine biologist, policy expert and writer, wants the broader environmental movement to understand the crucial link between the fight to save the planet and the fight for racial justice.

And we’ll hear how the Donors of Color Network is working to increase philanthropic funding for environmental initiatives led by people of color.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

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Over the past two years, about 200 journalists across the country have been detained or arrested while on the job. Many were covering the social and racial justice protests that began after the murder of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis.

NPR Media Correspondent David Folkenflik and NPR producer Marc Rivers look at the growing tension between police and the press through the lens of one March 2021 night at Echo Park Lake, when police detained at least 16 journalists.

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s mask mandate on planes, trains and buses ended earlier this month, and it came down, in part, to a judge’s interpretation of the word “sanitation.” U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle voided the mask requirement, citing a 1944 law that gives the CDC power to stop the spread of communicable diseases through measures like inspection, fumigation, disinfection and sanitation.

Lawrence Gostin is a professor of public health law at Georgetown University. He explains what the 1944 Public Health Service Act did and why he thinks the judge’s interpretation could have an impact on the United States’ ability to respond to future health crises. Additional reporting by NPR’s Pien Huang also appeared in this episode.

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One Palestinian man’s struggle to get life-saving medical care while living in the Gaza Strip highlights many lesser-seen victims of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Since the militant group Hamas took over Gaza 15 years ago, Israel’s travel restrictions have resulted in many barriers for Palestinians seeking critical health care.

Palestinians can try to get medical treatment both in and outside of Gaza, but need a travel permit to choose the latter. And while Israel grants thousands of travel permits a year, the timeline for securing one can be long. Some doctors have also fled Gaza. All of these factors can pose dangerous delays for vital treatment.

NPR Jerusalem Correspondent Daniel Estrin followed one patient’s difficult journey to get heart surgery.

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Stephanie is one of nearly one million Americans who have died of COVID-19. Her family says Stephanie’s death was avoidable, but in recent years, she had been drawn into conspiracy theories.

She believed that the coronavirus was a hoax and refused to get vaccinated. When she got COVID-19 last winter, Stephanie refused treatments and eventually died just a few days after Christmas.

While there is no way to know exactly how many people like Stephanie have died because they believed conspiracy theories, the Kaiser Family Foundation recently found that more than 200,000 Americans would be alive today, had they had been vaccinated.

NPR’s Geoff Brumfiel reports.

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Between the 1990s and late 2000s, people in Chechnya described Russia’s wars there as a nightmare. Its former leader, Akhmad Kadyrov, resisted Russian forces.

But today, the Muslim-majority Chechen Republic is ruled by Kadyrov’s son, Ramzan. He’s a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is accused of numerous human rights abuses and is also leading his own forces against Ukraine to aid the Kremlin.

Rachel Denber, Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia Division, explains Ramzan Kadyrov’s stake in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

NPR National Security Correspondent Greg Myre, who reported from Chechnya during the wars, also breaks down the republic’s evolution over the last 25 years.

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