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Two minutes — that’s how long President Trump says it will take him to figure out whether Russian President Vladimir Putin is serious about finding a way to end his war with Ukraine. Details are still scarce — but Putin and Trump are set to meet Friday in Alaska. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wasn’t invited. What does Trump hope to achieve, and can he get it from Putin? Ambassador John Bolton, Trump's national security adviser in his first term, was with Trump the last time Trump met w...
President Trump stated his administration would take control of D.C. police and deploy the National Guard due to perceived high crime, also hinting at interventions in other cities. However, local crime statistics contradict his claims, showing D.C.'s violent crime at a three-decade low. The episode explores D.C.'s unique legal status ("Home Rule") that permits such a federal takeover, the practical implications for residents and law enforcement, and the broader political ramifications of federalizing local power, including the limited legal basis for similar actions in other states.
The Trump administration announced this past week that it has entered talks with the Cook Islands to research and develop seabed mineral resources. The Polynesian archipelago is one of only a handful of countries worldwide that has begun permitting this type of exploration, called deep-sea mining. Deep-sea mining is not regulated. There's no blueprint for how to do it safely, or responsibly. Which is why, for the last decade, the UN's International Seabed Authority has worked to draw up regulati...
The question of whether Russian interference in the 2016 election was a decisive reason Donald Trump won the presidency is one that has dogged Trump for the better part of a decade. It's also been the subject of numerous investigations. But even though that question has been asked and answered, the current Trump administration is launching another investigation in an effort to reach a different conclusion. Last month, Trump's Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, declassified documen...
The FBI is investigating at least 250 people who may be tied to online networks that target children. These networks encourage kids to hurt themselves, other minors or even animals. In some countries, they have been tied to mass casualty and terrorism plots. NPR's domestic extremism correspondent Odette Yousef has spoken with a family that experienced this firsthand. For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for C onsider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org . Email us at consid...
In 2006, Ari Shapiro reported on how Hurricane Katrina made an already broken public defender system in New Orleans worse. The court system collapsed in the aftermath of the storm. Katrina caused horrific destruction in New Orleans. It threw incarcerated people into a sort of purgatory - some were lost in prisons for more than a year. But the storm also cleared the way for changes that the city's public defender system had needed for decades. Two decades later, Shapiro returns to New Orleans and...
Fights over Congressional maps never used to be this intense. On Tuesday, Texas Republicans voted to issue civil arrest warrants for Democrats who fled the state. The GOP is trying to redraw house districts, and the proposed new map could give Republicans as many as five more House seats. That change could easily decide control of Congress. This fight is rippling out to other states too with President Trump urging Republicans to follow the lead of Texas. And Democratic governors saying they migh...
Google's AI Overviews feature can deliver an answer to your question before you click a single link. But it spells bad news for the publishers that write the articles that power these AI summaries: their business models depend on site visits to sell ads. And some smaller publishers have already gone out of business as the use of AI summaries grows. "The extinction-level event is already here," said Helen Havlak, publisher of tech news site The Verge. NPR's John Ruwitch reports on how companies a...
Some young people are hesitant to start a family because they are worried about the impact it will have on the environment. But some experts argue, there are good reasons to still consider having children. One of them is Dean Spears. He's an economist and demographer at the University of Texas - Austin, and co-author of the new book, "After the Spike: Population, Progress, and the Case for People." Spears argues that depopulation could create a whole range of new problems while still not address...
The job of a media reporter is to examine the role the press plays in our democracy, and the choices the large corporations operating newsrooms are making every day. It's a tough assignment, even more so when it means covering the place you work. For this week's reporter's notebook series, NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik talks about how he navigates his beat, reporting on his employer and the larger media moment we find ourselves in right now. For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This,...
Thursday night, President Trump announced new tariff rates, and a new deadline. For weeks, the administration said that new, tougher tariffs would go into effect August 1 — instead, most countries won't see the new rates kick in for at least a week. Meanwhile, new numbers from the Labor Department show job growth slowed sharply this spring, as President Trump's earlier, worldwide tariffs started to bite. Shortly after their release, Trump said he was firing the head of the government agency that...
"In an era where false claims are the norm, it's much easier to ignore the fact-checkers." Those are the final words of the final column of Glenn Kessler, who has been The Fact Checker at the Washington Post these last 14 years. Kessler is one of many journalists making high-profile exits from the Post, some of whom cite the new direction the paper's leadership is taking as the reason they're leaving. In an interview, Kessler reflects on the arc of the project, why he's leaving, and the value of...
This year, hundreds of employees at the Justice Department have been fired, sometimes over clashes with the Trump administration, and other times for unknown reasons. Those departures are spreading fear across the workforce and transforming the Justice Department. NPR Justice correspondent Carrie Johnson spoke with a few of the career civil servants who have lost their job for reasons they say are illegal or improper. For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for C onsider This+ via Ap...
President Donald Trump is aiming to fundamentally shift how the country manages homelessness with a new executive order he signed last week. It calls for changes that would make it easier for states and cities to move people living on the street into treatment for mental illness or addiction, and in some cases, potentially force people into treatment. Consider This: The Trump administration says the federal government has spent tens of billions of dollars on housing without addressing the root c...
New light has emerged between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump, with the latter disputing Israel's claim that there is no starvation in Gaza. But Consider This: Even as global outrage and assistance grows, aid agencies say only a total ceasefire will allow all the necessary aid in to get to those who desperately need it in Gaza. For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for C onsider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org . Email us at considert...
President Trump traveled to Scotland to talk trade with the EU and play golf. But as soon as he landed he was asked about Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender. The pressure on the Trump administration has continued to intensify over its handling of the Epstein files, and who-knew-what-when . Pressure that's also coming from within his party. And as those calls have ramped up, so has messaging from the administration about a range of other issues, including a rehashing of the 2016 election...
At least 135 people died earlier this month when floods swept through the Texas Hill Country. As in any other natural disasters, journalists from around the country soon arrived to cover the catastrophe. For this week's reporter's notebook series, NPR's Sergio Martínez-Beltrán and Kat Lonsdorf speak with host Scott Detrow about their experiences covering the floods and the importance of interviewing people affected by the disaster with empathy and respect. For sponsor-free episodes of Consider T...
Before he entered politics, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a career out of stoking doubt about vaccines, promoting theories contradicted by mountains of scientific evidence on common vaccines which have been studied for decades and safely administered to hundreds of millions of people. Now, six months in as head of Health and Human Services, he has instituted a number of policy changes on access to vaccines for both children and adults. NPR's Mary Louise Kelly and health correspondents Rob Stein and...
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...
