With the wildfires in Maui contained, the recovery process has begun. The focus has also turned to how the island can prepare for similar disasters in the future Officials and experts hope to address Hawaii's emergency alert system, as well as the construction of more fire-resistant homes. But what of the fires themselves? We often hear about forest fires, but the deadliest fire in the US in more than a century was a grass fire. Co-host Ailsa Chang talks to Jeva Lange, who wrote a story called "...
Aug 24, 2023•10 min
Russia's state news agency Tass reported that the country's most famous mercenary, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was on the passenger list for a flight that crashed on its way from Moscow to St. Petersburg on Wednesday, killing all ten people on board. Despite being on the passenger list, it's not clear Prigozhin was on the flight. As head of the Wagner Group, Prigozhin led an unsuccessful mutiny against the Russian military in June. He quickly stood down and struck a deal with Russian President Vladimir P...
Aug 23, 2023•8 min
Former president Donald Trump is the frontrunner in the Republican presidential primary. And with a healthy lead in the polls, he's skipping the first Republican presidential debate on Wednesday. So how do you prep for a big, televised debate when your biggest opponent decides not to show up? That's been the question facing the eight Republicans who will be on stage in Milwaukee on Wednesday night. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's g...
Aug 22, 2023•14 min
Puerto Rico has seen a string of natural disasters in the past few years – hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, and landslides. When COVID-19 hit in 2020, things got even worse. These disasters have taken a heavy toll on student mental health. They've disrupted everyday life - including school. That disruption has seriously impacted educational outcomes for kids and teens on the island. The Nation's Report Card shows that more than one-third of fourth graders overall in the U.S are considered profic...
Aug 21, 2023•12 min
The last few elections have brought a wave of self-styled progressive prosecutors into office. They've won elections by campaigning on issues like bail reform and alternatives to incarceration for non-violent offenders. Now, Republican-controlled state legislatures and governors are taking steps to curtail their power, or strip them of it altogether. We talk to Monique Worrell, who was elected state attorney for Florida's ninth judicial circuit, which includes the city of Orlando, in 2020. This ...
Aug 20, 2023•12 min
A growing body of research makes it clear that noise pollution can have severely harmful impacts on our health. It has been tied to heart disease and thousands of premature deaths around the world. Still, our communities seem to get louder and louder. Some people are fighting back - pushing for more regulation and quieter cities. NPR's Pien Huang takes a sonic tour of Providence, Rhode Island with researcher Erica Walker and talks about noise pollution solutions with Jamie Banks the founder and ...
Aug 18, 2023•15 min
The Biden administration is under intense political pressure from Republicans over immigration, who accuse the president of being too lenient toward migrants. Now, the administration is locking up more unauthorized immigrants and asylum-seekers in detention facilities, and NPR has exclusively obtained more than 1,600 pages of confidential inspection reports examining conditions inside those facilities. They describe barbaric practices, negligent medical care, racist abuse and filthy conditions. ...
Aug 17, 2023•14 min
The CDC says that a new omicron variant called EG.5 is causing a summer wave of COVID cases. Yet, COVID is nowhere near the threat that it was more than three years ago at the beginning of the pandemic. And that might be one of the reasons that people are cruising again on big ships following a COVID-19 decline. WLRN reporter Tom Hudson tells us how one of the hardest hit industries during the peak of the pandemic is trying to make a comeback. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local n...
Aug 16, 2023•12 min
A grand jury in Georgia has indicted Donald Trump for his role in failed efforts to overturn the state's 2020 presidential election results, implicating the former president as the head of a sweeping conspiracy to subvert his defeat. The indictment also includes charges against former Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, John Eastman and Jenna Ellis, and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, along with a number of so-called fake electors. In charging former President Donald Tr...
Aug 15, 2023•11 min
It's been two years since the Taliban entered Kabul, throwing the final days of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan into chaos. Crowds of people desperate to leave the country surrounded the airport. Tens of thousands of Afghans were airlifted out before American troops pulled out. Many more are still trying to reach the U.S. Some are risking their lives to cross the border from Mexico. NPR's Tom Bowman has the story of one family who traveled from Afghanistan to Virginia, by way of Pakistan an...
Aug 14, 2023•13 min
For the past few months, President Biden's top foreign policy advisors have been working as intermediaries between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Eventually they want to get the two countries to agree on a deal to finally establish formal diplomatic relations. It would be a breakthrough for Israel to get that recognition, after decades of Arab hostility stemming from the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Saudi Arabia is home to two of Islam's holiest sites, and it's an oil giant in the region. But it seem...
Aug 13, 2023•13 min
As the battle over book bans in schools and libraries continues to play out in various states across the U.S., the toll it's taking on librarians is coming at a great cost — personally and financially. Many librarians are speaking up about fearing for their jobs and safety. Yet some conservative activists see the current fight playing out as necessary to protect children. NPR's Tovia Smith traveled to Louisiana where tensions have been flaring up — pitting librarians against book ban advocates i...
Aug 11, 2023•16 min
Hawaii may be a tourist attraction to many Americans, but for over a million people, it's their home. And like any state in the US, it is not immune to the effects of climate change. This week brought a devastating reminder, as wildfires stoked by Hurricane Dora spread across the island of Maui. Dozens have been killed in the fires and thousands have been evacuated. Much of the historical town of Lahaina lies in ruins. Hawaii, like many other places on the planet, has experienced less rainfall i...
Aug 10, 2023•9 min
The number of overdoses from fentanyl continues to soar, as do concerns from those in Washington. Immigration authorities say illicit fentanyl is flowing into the U.S. from Mexico through official ports of entry. Not everyone believes that's the full story. NPR's Joel Rose traveled to the border to find out what's really happening. Fentanyl is largely smuggled by U.S. citizens and other authorized border crossers. We hear the story of one of the smugglers. In participating regions, you'll also h...
Aug 09, 2023•11 min
In past wars, updates have trickled out slowly — often tightly controlled by the militaries involved. In the war in Ukraine, every day is a firehose of nearly real-time information, in the form of cell phone footage captured by civilians, updates from satellite intelligence companies and embedded military bloggers. NPR national security correspondent Greg Myre explains how that's shaping perceptions of the war in Russia, in Ukraine and around the world. In participating regions, you'll also hear...
Aug 08, 2023•9 min
One Republican senator from Alabama is single-handedly holding up over 300 senior-level military promotions and appointments. Senator Tommy Tuberville says he's doing it to take a stand against a Defense Department policy that reimburses travel expenses for military personnel who have to leave their states to get an abortion or other reproductive care. Tonya Murphy is a military spouse who went to Capitol Hill to hand deliver a petition signed by hundreds calling on lawmakers to stop the impasse...
Aug 07, 2023•15 min
July was almost certainly the hottest month, globally, on record. It was also a month in which many lives were upended by weather related-disasters — the sort of disasters that are increasingly likely as climate change continues. So what do the people who lived through those disasters make of all this? We asked Dr. Frank LoVecchio, an emergency room doctor at Valleywise Health Medical Center in Phoenix, Ariz., about trying to keep people alive who spent too much time out in the deadly heat. And ...
Aug 06, 2023•12 min
For years, Russell Moore was one of the top officials in the Southern Baptist Convention. But after he criticized Donald Trump, Moore found himself ostracized from many other Evangelical leaders who embraced Trump and Trumpism. Moore eventually resigned from his post, and found himself on the outside of a denomination that had, up until that point, defined his life. Today, Moore argues that Christianity is in crisis in America, and he explores a way forward for the faith he loves in his book, "L...
Aug 04, 2023•14 min
Former President Donald Trump pleaded not guilty to criminal charges related to efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. And a member of his legal team told NPR that Trump plans to invoke the right to freedom of speech as part of his defense. To learn how a free speech defense would work for the former president in court, we hear from Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a professor at Stetson University's College of Law in Florida. And former acting solicitor general of the United States, Neal ...
Aug 03, 2023•13 min
The unions representing actors and writers in Hollywood have some differences in what they want from the big film studios. But one thing they agree on is the threat posed by artificial intelligence to their members' livelihoods. The threat of AI is something Hollywood was imagining long before it was real. NPR arts critic Bob Mondello tells the story of how AI became a movie villain. The threat of AI is something Hollywood was imagining long before it was real. NPR arts critic Bob Mondello tells...
Aug 02, 2023•15 min
Former President Donald Trump was indicted Tuesday by a federal grand jury on four counts related to the efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, according to court documents. Trump was charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, witness tampering, conspiracy against the rights of citizens and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding. Special counsel Jack Smith has been leading the investigation into Trump's conduct after the 2020 election and his role in th...
Aug 02, 2023•13 min
Two years ago, Mohamed Bazoum was elected as president in Niger's first peaceful democratic transfer of power. He enjoyed the backing of Western governments, including the United States. Then, last week, members of his own presidential guard detained him and seized power. The coup in Niger is part of a wave of attempted, and successful, power grabs in West and Central Africa, a region gripped by political instability. Now, a group of West African nations imposed sanctions on Niger, and threatene...
Jul 31, 2023•10 min
There's a labor shortage on farms in the U.S., and that has implications for all of us who enjoy fresh fruits and vegetables. For farmers across America, finding enough labor has become a top concern. Decades ago, whole families of migrant farmworkers, the majority of them from Mexico, would travel around the U.S. in search of seasonal work. But over time, farmworkers began to settle. Now, many of them are aging out. And their children and grandchildren are finding opportunities in other sectors...
Jul 30, 2023•14 min
Editor's note: This episode contains graphic descriptions of violence. The U.S. military has consistently maintained that its troops didn't harm civilians during the 2019 raid on the Syrian hideout of ISIS founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, which lead to Baghdadi blowing himself up. It stuck to that version of events even after NPR reported on claims from Syrians that civilians were killed and maimed by U.S. helicopter fire during the raid. The Pentagon claimed the men were enemy combatants. NPR sued...
Jul 28, 2023•13 min
The Supreme Court may have ended race-conscious admissions in higher education. But the end of affirmative action seems to have added fuel to another contentious debate around college admissions policies. For decades, many elite, private institutions have given prospective college students preference if a relative attended the school or, in some cases, when a major donor was involved. While the practice of affirmative action is dead, legacy admissions continue. But more and more critics of the p...
Jul 27, 2023•11 min
When Utah passed a ban on gender-affirming care for people younger than 18, Kat and their family had to make a tough choice. Should they uproot their lives and leave the state? Kat is 14 and transgender. The Utah law banned the medical care that Kat was considering. Around 20 states have passed similar laws — meaning many families could face the same tough decision: whether to leave their homes and where to go. Often it's to a state like Minnesota, where elected officials have protected trans he...
Jul 26, 2023•16 min
When a fiery, toxic train wreck forced residents of East Palestine, Ohio to evacuate last February, the crash and its aftermath became a national flashpoint and a hot button issue on both sides of the political aisle. Alan Shaw, the CEO of Norfolk Southern - the freight railroad responsible - found himself in front of Congress, grilled by bipartisan lawmakers. Shaw insists the company is continuing its commitment to help East Palestine recover, and that they are at the forefront of improving saf...
Jul 25, 2023•14 min
On Monday, Israel's parliament voted into law a key measure to overhaul the country's judiciary. The measure prevents judges from striking down government decisions on the basis that they are "unreasonable." The law strips Israel's Supreme Court of a key check on the power of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government. This marks the first big move in a broader effort to weaken court oversight of senior officials. It comes after six months of protests from Israelis concerned that their gover...
Jul 24, 2023•10 min
The United States' preeminent professional soccer league, Major League Soccer, has long lagged behind top European leagues. However, international soccer superstar Lionel Messi joining the Inter Miami might be the boost the league needs. NPR's Scott Detrow reports on the impact of Messi coming to the MLS and what the league's future could be. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community. Email us at considerthis@npr.o...
Jul 23, 2023•12 min
Tony Bennett, the crooner whose success spanned generations, died Friday. He was 96 years old. His voice was synonymous with the Great American Songbook, which he continued to bring to new audiences even as the country's musical tastes changed. NPR's Walter Ray Watson traces the arc of Bennett's life, from his days as a singing waiter in Astoria, New York, to his Billboard- charting hits as a nonagenarian. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of ...
Jul 21, 2023•10 min
