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Federal education policy has seen a lot of changes since President Trump's inauguration. For example, the Department of Education itself, which Trump has vowed to close. But that hasn't stopped the Trump administration from also wielding the Department's power. Most recently, by withholding billions of dollars for K-12 schools. The Trump administration has drastically changed the federal government's role in education. What does that mean for American classrooms? For sponsor-free episodes of Con...
Since returning to office, President Trump has moved swiftly to upend decades of federal policy—from education to healthcare to vaccines...but nowhere more aggressively than immigration. Congress just passed tens of billions in funding for immigration enforcement...It's the largest domestic enforcement funding in U.S. history, fueling Trump's mass deportation campaign of migrants living in the U.S. illegally. President Trump campaigned for office promising the largest deportation in history. Six...
As a candidate in 2024, President Trump promised – often – to end what he and other conservatives describe as "woke" policies. On his first day in office, he signed executive orders rolling back policies around diversity, equity and inclusion — and those policy changes have continued over the last six months of the second Trump administration. One of the oldest civil rights organizations in the country now warns that the administration's policies have thrust Black Americans — and the entire coun...
President Trump helped reshape the federal courts during his first term in office. And he relied heavily on the Federalist Society in that effort, which helped him zero in on judges with a conservative, originalist interpretation of the constitution. Now the nominations machinery is restarting, and Trump's most controversial judicial nominee is only one step away from the federal bench. His name is Emil Bove. During his first term, Trump appointed scores of originalists to the federal bench– a v...
Plea deals with the 9/11 defendants, including for the alleged ringleader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, have been canceled. Families of those who died on September 11th are still calling for justice. What happens next in the most delayed criminal trial in US history? NPR's Sacha Pfeiffer speaks with Georgetown University Law professor Stephen Vladeck. For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for C onsider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org . Email us at considerthis@npr.org . See ...
NPR correspondent Jasmine Garsd has taken several reporting trips to Florida recently, a state seeing some of the most aggressive immigration enforcement since President Trump took office again in January. She's spoken with children separated from their parents and reported on a new massive detention center in the state. For our weekly Reporter's Notebook series Garsd talks about how Florida is key to understanding what the future of immigration enforcement may look like. For sponsor-free episod...
One of the narratives at the heart of President Trump's political movement is this: American society is dominated by a shadowy group of elites, and those elites are deeply corrupt. Nothing represented that theory more than the case of Jeffrey Epstein. He was a man most people had never heard of initially, with a private plane and a private island. Acquainted with the world's most powerful people: British royalty, U.S. presidents. A man who ultimately died in jail...by suicide, according to autho...
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Earlier this week, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy testified on Capitol Hill, where he thanked Congress for recently approving $12.5 billion dollars to modernize the nation's aging air traffic control system. But some U.S. air traffic controllers say there's a much deeper problem: a nationwide staffing shortage that leaves controllers overworked and employee morale low. NPR's Joel Rose and Joe Hernandez spoke with five current and former air traffic controllers to find out what improvements ...
It's been over three months since President Trump announced very big across-the-board tariffs on imports from nearly every territory on Earth–including uninhabited islands. It's a move he said would revitalize the U.S. economy. Since that splashy White House announcement, the tariff rates have been a wildly moving target. Ratcheted up - then back down - on China, specifically. Overlaid with global product-specific tariffs on categories like automobiles and copper. Partially paused after the stoc...
As climate change intensifies, the U.S. is experiencing more frequent and severe rainstorms, leading to devastating flash floods nationwide. This episode delves into why a warmer atmosphere causes more intense rainfall and highlights the urgent need for communities to invest billions in overhauling aging infrastructure and improving stormwater management systems. It also examines the inadequacies of FEMA flood maps in accurately representing risk, discusses the challenges of flood insurance, and underscores the political and cultural hurdles to effective flood preparation and regulation.
President Trump has made some big shifts in U.S. policy on Russia's war with Ukraine lately. In the course of two weeks, Trump halted and reinstated weapons to Ukraine and he began openly showing frustration with Russian president Vladimir Putin's continued military escalations. Now, Trump has announced a deal with NATO to try to pressure Russia toward a ceasefire deal in just 50 days by threatening stiff tariffs and increased military aid to Ukraine. President Trump seems to be taking a tougher...
It's been a year since the assassination attempt on President Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania and the motivations of the shooter are still unclear. The US Capitol Police threat assessment cases have risen for the second year in a row, with the total number more than doubling since 2017. At times political violence is starting to feel as pervasive as school shootings. But what do we know about what's driving this anger? NPR's Scott Detrow speaks with Katherine Keneally, from the Institute for Strat...
On July 2nd, Sean Combs was acquitted of the most serious charges he faced: racketeering and sex trafficking. He was found guilty on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution — and he remains in prison awaiting sentencing in early October. Over the course of eight weeks, the trial became a spectacle, even by the high standards of celebrity courtroom dramas. One reason? All of the influencers. For our weekly Reporter's Notebook series we bring you the the view from inside the courtho...
All across the U.S., there are aging oil and natural gas wells no longer in use. A lot of them don't have anyone on the hook to seal them up. Some estimate over a million such "orphan wells" still exist. Because they haven't been plugged, they're still leaking greenhouse gases and other chemicals into the atmosphere and into the land around them. What would it take to plug them — or even just one of them? For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for C onsider This+ via Apple Podcasts ...
Israel bans international journalists from independent access to Gaza. But NPR's Anas Baba is from Gaza, and in the 21 months he has been reporting on the war, he's also been living it. Over the course of the war, he has lost a third of his body weight, and until his food supplies ran out several weeks ago, he was getting by on just one small meal a day. Israel still tightly restricts the entry of food into Gaza. The food it does allow in is mostly distributed through new sites run by private Am...
It's been nearly a week since devastating flooding tore through Kerr County, Texas killing more than a hundred people. Now, after unimaginable tragedy, residents are coming together to help each other move forward. NPR's Juana Summers and producers Erika Ryan and Tyler Bartlam visited the City West Church, which has transformed from a house of worship into a pop up food distribution site serving thousands of meals to the community and first responders. For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This,...
The total fertility rate is a small number with big consequences. It measures how many babies, on average, each woman will have over her lifetime. And for a population to remain stable - flat, no growth, no decline - women, on average, have to have 2.1 kids. In the U.S., that number is 1.6, and dropping. It's driving a new political debate about what – if anything – can be done about it. The thing is, beneath that demographic data point are millions of families making intimate decisions about ki...
This episode examines the devastating flash flooding in Texas Hill Country, sharing harrowing personal accounts from survivors who witnessed the rapid rise of the Guadalupe River. It also provides on-the-ground reporting from Kerr County, detailing the scale of destruction, ongoing search and rescue efforts, and community resilience. The discussion further explores the potential link between climate change and the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme rain events like this one.
If you're a parent, decisions about vaccines have gotten a lot more confusing recently. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s health department is walking back longstanding recommendations. NPR's Pien Huang speaks with a pediatrician and a vaccine researcher to discuss how the changes may affect public health - and how frontline conversations are going between pediatricians and families. For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for C onsider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.nprth.org . Email us...
Independence Day means different things to each of us. On this 249th birthday for America, we spend some time looking at different definitions of America by revisiting NPR's 2018 series: American Anthem — which had the simple goal of telling 50 stories about 50 songs that have become galvanizing forces in American culture. For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for C onsider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org . Email us at considerthis@npr.org . See pcm.adswizz.com for info...
President Trump put essentially his entire domestic agenda in one bill. It would significantly cut clean energy incentives, Medicaid and food assistance programs — and double down on tax cuts, immigration enforcement and national defense. Despite opposition from Democrats, and divides within the Republican Party, it passed through Congress. How did that happen? And what does it mean for American taxpayers? NPR correspondents explain. For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for C onsi...
This summer marks 80 years since the end of World War II when Allied forces liberated Nazi-occupied Europe, and also began to discover the horrific scale of the Holocaust. An estimated six million Jews were systematically murdered by the Nazi regime. With the passage of time, there are fewer and fewer survivors who can tell the stories of what they witnessed and endured. Once fringe ideas of Holocaust denial are spreading. Multiple members of President Donald Trump's administration have expresse...
The massive tax and spending bill central to President Trump's agenda is one step closer to reality. After weeks of negotiations and 49 consecutive votes that started Monday morning, the senate approved President Trump's signature domestic policy bill around lunch time Tuesday. It now goes back to the House of Representatives where Republican Speaker Mike Johnson will have to reconcile the senate changes with his members' competing priorities. Michael Ricci has had a long career in republican po...
The massive budget bill that Senate Republicans are debating pays for some of its tax cuts by slashing hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid spending. The latest report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates nearly 12 million people will lose health insurance if the Senate version of the bill becomes law. Trump insists the cuts come from eliminating waste, fraud and abuse. Democrats have said they break Trump's promise not to touch Medicaid — and over the weekend, Repu...
A number of Supreme Court decisions handed down this term have expanded the power of the president while limiting the power of the courts. How has this term changed the relationship of the judicial and the executive branches? NPR's Scott Detrow speaks with Greg Stohr from Bloomberg about what we've learned about the makeup and direction of the court from this year's rulings. For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for C onsider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org . Email us a...
Although President Trump launched air strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities, the administration has chosen a different path when dealing with Kim Jong Un, the leader of nuclear-armed North Korea. For our Reporter's Notebook series, host Scott Detrow speaks with NPR correspondent Anthony Kuhn about covering Trump and Kim's past negotiations and the difficulties of reporting on North Korea. For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for C onsider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.np...
Three different federal judges have issued nationwide blocks to President Trump's executive order to deny U.S. citizenship to some babies born to immigrants in the U.S. These court orders are called universal injunctions. But when the case reached the Supreme Court, the administration didn't focus on the constitutional right to birthright citizenship. Instead, government lawyers put most of their energy into arguing that universal injunctions themselves are unconstitutional. And on Friday, in a ...
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has spent years spreading doubt about the safety of vaccines and linking them to autism. Dozens of studies have debunked the theory, but it has nevertheless persisted for years. Part of the reason why may be that autism diagnoses have soared over the last few decades. Dr. Allen Frances is psychiatrist who led the task force that created the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which expanded the...
Tens of millions of people across the US are currently under a heat advisory. And the extreme heat isn't just affecting people. You may have seen videos online of the heat causing asphalt roads to buckle. It is impacting rail travel too. Amtrak has been running some trains more slowly, as have the public transit systems of Washington and Philadelphia. Mikhail Chester, an engineering professor at Arizona State University, talks through the intersection of extreme heat and transportation. And NPR'...
