The deadliest phase of the U.S. fentanyl crisis appears to be over. That's according to new research showing fatal overdoses from fentanyl and other street drugs continue to plunge and have now dropped from their peak in all 50 states. But with that good news comes with challenges including caring for a larger population of people, who are surviving, but may be deeply unwell. For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for C onsider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org . Email us ...
Mar 11, 2025•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast House Republicans have to get their spending bill passed by Friday to avoid a government shutdown. They can likely afford to lose just one vote. And that's the easy part. Then they'll have to get working on their plan to extend 4.5 trillion dollars in tax cuts passed under the Trump administration — a plan that will require huge cuts in government spending. Republicans are adamant that cuts to Medicaid are a non-starter. But the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office released a report last wee...
Mar 10, 2025•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast Many migrants in Mexico journey north to the U.S. border by riding on top of freight trains. It's a dangerous trip: migrants have been kidnapped by cartels or killed by falling onto the tracks. And now, with the Trump administration suspending asylum applications at the border, the chances of crossing into the U.S. are even smaller than they were a few months ago. NPR's Eyder Peralta recently rode along with migrants through a frigid night to try to answer a simple question: why do so many still...
Mar 09, 2025•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast It's been a little more than a week since Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office. Vice President JD Vance was in the meeting too. And Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the nation's top diplomat, sat on an Oval Office couch, mostly silent, as Trump and Vance berated the Ukrainian leader. Along the way, the president and vice president made it clear just how much of the established global order they are ready to upend. An order that for most of his...
Mar 07, 2025•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast Like a lot of economists, Mark Zandi, with Moody's Analytics, thinks President Trump's across-the-board tariffs are a bad idea. Saying, "Tariffs, broad-based tariffs, are a real problem for the economy." But Zandi says – it's not just the tariffs themselves that are the problem, it's the uncertainty created by Trump's rollout. Trump threatened 25% Tariffs on Canada and Mexico would start in February. They were paused at the 11th hour, only to eventually go into effect this week. On Thursday Trum...
Mar 06, 2025•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast A hundred minutes — that's how long President Trump had the floor — literally — last night. A hundred minutes he used to lay out his agenda, his grievances and what he argued are the accomplishments of his first six weeks in office. This all came during his "joint address" to Congress — the State of the Union that's not a State of the Union. Since Trump returned to office in January, there's been little room left for democrats to make their case to the American people. Democratic moderates think...
Mar 05, 2025•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast After the Trump-Zelenskyy blow-up on Friday, European leaders held emergency talks in London to put together a roadmap to peace. Then, on Tuesday, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen announced a proposal called ReArm Europe. The roughly $840 billion plan would quickly build up defense budgets in Europe. Meanwhile, the U.S. seems to continue to align itself with Russia. President Trump is upending the U.S.-led order that has dominated global politics for the better part of a centur...
Mar 04, 2025•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast People who work for the federal court system don't have the same kinds of job protections that most other Americans do. A nearly year-long NPR investigation has found problems with the way the courts police sexual harassment and bullying...and a pervasive culture of fear about blowing the whistle. A warning to our listeners, this piece contains a description of sexual assault. For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for C onsider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org . Email us...
Mar 03, 2025•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast Unlike any other religious leader around the world, the leader of the world's one billion Catholics is also the leader of a sovereign nation. And Pope Francis hasn't been shy about using that political power. He's pushed for an end to the wars between Hamas and Israel, and Russia and Ukraine. And he's repeatedly tried to point the world's attention to two ongoing challenges: immigration and climate change. Much of the world has spent the last two weeks focused on Pope Francis' health. And the re...
Mar 03, 2025•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast On Tuesday, President Trump will address Congress and the nation in a major speech, where he'll sum up what he's accomplished in his first month. And while the Trump administration has already claimed success in curbing illegal immigration, many people affected by his policies have experienced chaos and panic. Andrea Lino, a supervising attorney with the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, shares stories about how Trump's actions have affected her clients and her work. For sponsor-free episodes ...
Feb 28, 2025•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast On Tuesday, 21 DOGE employees resigned. NPR spoke to one of them who says she felt the new administration was causing "harm to the American people." As Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency work to remake the federal government, some of the people tasked with executing his vision have serious concerns about what the changes will do. 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 . Le...
Feb 27, 2025•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast On Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is scheduled to meet President Donald Trump at the White House. On the agenda — a deal for Ukraine to share its rich natural resources. The Trump administration wants hundreds of billions of dollars of rare earth metals and other critical minerals. Details are thin on what exactly Ukraine would get in exchange. The meeting comes as the world marks three years since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine , and as Trump promises to bring an end t...
Feb 26, 2025•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast President Trump's calls for the U.S. to take over Greenland have sparked alarm and outrage. Denmark, which is responsible for Greenland's security, recently announced that it would further boost its defense spending. And a recent poll found 85 percent of Greenlanders are opposed to being part of the United States. Parliamentary candidate Naaja Nathanielsen is one of them. It isn't clear whether Trump's ambitions for Greenland will take. But some politicians in the territory are taking his calls ...
Feb 25, 2025•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast On Friday, Donald Trump fired Chairman of the Joint Chief's of Staff CQ Brown, along with several other top Pentagon officials. Now, Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island, has a question for the man tapped to succeed him, Retired Air Force Lieutenant General Dan Caine. Quote — "will he have the ability to speak truth to power?" Senator Reed is the top democrat on the Armed Services Committee. The Trump administration says it wants a military built on meritocracy. Critics say it's build...
Feb 24, 2025•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast President Donald Trump's tariffs and comments about turning Canada into the 51st state have tested U.S. relations with the country. One example is the deterioration of longstanding bonds between Detroit, Michigan and its neighbor across the river, Windsor, Ontario. NPR's Don Gonyea is a Detroit native and current resident of the city. He's had a front row view to changing attitudes between the two populations who have long enjoyed a very friendly, symbiotic relationship. For sponsor-free episode...
Feb 23, 2025•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast "The Department of Education is a big con job." That's just one of the things President Trump has said about one of the most high profile departments in federal government — a department Trump says he wants to eliminate. Trump says he wants to save money, and kill policies he doesn't like. Trump and Elon Musk's DOGE has already started cutting funding from the department. The Trump administration wants the Department of Education gone. But can they get rid of it, and what could be lost in the pr...
Feb 21, 2025•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast Earlier this week, President Donald Trump accused Ukraine of starting the war with Russia. Three years ago Russian troops poured over Ukraine's border, and Russian missiles and drones continue to bombard Ukrainian cities. Besides being untrue, the comments echoed a popular Kremlin talking point. And Trump's comments signaled a seismic shift in decades of U.S. foreign policy. Supporters of Ukraine and its allies, both here and abroad, were left shaken. NPR's Joanna Kakissis and Greg Myre discuss ...
Feb 20, 2025•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast Is the United States headed toward autocracy? That's a question prompted by a steady stream of executive orders seeking to consolidate power in the White House and upend long held policies and norms. New York Times Opinion writer M. Gessen lived through much of Russia's slide into autocracy, and wrote a book about it. They argue that one of the ways Vladimir Putin consolidated power... was by making a series of arguments that seemed outrageous at the time — like the idea that the LGBT population...
Feb 19, 2025•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast New York Governor Kathy Hochul, along withother top officials spent much of Tuesday weighing whether to use her power to remove New York City Mayor Eric Adams from office. It's a power that no New York Governor has ever used before. Adams faces growing calls to step down over allegations of corruption - and criticism that Adams' deepening ties with the Trump administration have compromised his ability to govern independently. The nation's biggest city has been all but paralyzed by the legal and ...
Feb 18, 2025•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast An Israeli delegation is in Cairo to hash out details for the second phase of a ceasefire deal with Hamas. Under the first phase of the deal, Hamas agreed to release a total of 33 Israeli hostages – and Israel said it would free around 1,900 Palestinian prisoners and detainees. NPR's Jerome Socolovsky looks into why Israel has long accepted lopsided deals to bring back abducted citizens. For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for C onsider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org...
Feb 17, 2025•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast Across the country and around the world, tens of thousands of federal workers face uncertainty amid an unprecedented reduction and restructuring of the federal workforce. President Donald Trump has signed a flurry of executive orders — freezing hiring, ordering teleworkers back to the office, reclassifying employees and dismantling wide-ranging DEI programs. What will mass layoffs mean for federal workers and the government services they provide? For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign ...
Feb 16, 2025•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast There are at least two million people in America who have thoughts and ideas they can't put into words. People who have had strokes or traumatic brain injuries often live with aphasia: difficulty using language, both written and spoken. But music mostly originates in the undamaged hemisphere of the brain, and people with aphasia can often sing. Today in our bonus episode, in partnership with the podcast Rumble Strip, we meet a member of The Aphasia Choir of Vermont. For sponsor-free episodes of ...
Feb 15, 2025•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast President Donald Trump is now chairman of The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Trump replaced 18 members of the board with allies who then elected him into the position. There is no precedent for this move – most presidents have been hands-off with the cultural center since it opened in 1971 – including President Trump himself during his first term. Already, artists affiliated with the center have departed and performers are canceling shows. For a decade, Deborah Rutter...
Feb 14, 2025•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Panama has been looking for solutions to a long-term problem. Every time a ship passes through the Panama Canal, more than 50 million gallons of fresh water from Lake Gatun pour out into the ocean. Nobody ever thought Panama could run out of water. It is one of the rainiest countries in the world. But a couple years ago, a drought got so bad that the canal had to reduce traffic by more than a third - which had a huge impact on global shipping. The Panama Canal needs more water. Authorities have ...
Feb 13, 2025•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Gaza Strip – ground zero of Israel's war with Hamas – is only about twice the size of Washington, DC. It has about 25 miles of coastline along the Mediterranean Sea, with a population of about 2 million people. Last week, President Trump proposed relocating those people to other countries in the region, like Egypt and Jordan. Trump has said the Palestinians would not be allowed to return: UN officials and others say Trump's plan would amount to ethnic cleansing. Despite domestic and internat...
Feb 12, 2025•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast President Trump's blizzard of executive orders has run into a snowplow of legal challenges. There are dozens of cases challenging the White House's actions. Judges all over the country have found that the White House acted illegally. The challenges, and the rulings, continue to pour in. But Trump's team is punching back. After a judge blocked Elon Musk's DOGE team from accessing personal data and other Treasury department systems, Musk referred to him as "a corrupt judge protecting corruption" a...
Feb 11, 2025•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency is quickly expanding its reach through the federal government. It recently accessed systems at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Musk and his team now are looking at key payment and contracting systems for Medicare and Medicaid. That was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. On X, Musk said he believes quote "big money fraud is happening." Medicare insures older people. Medicaid offers insurance to low income people and those wit...
Feb 10, 2025•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Project 2025 , is a 900-plus page blueprint for a conservative President. It was unveiled in the spring of 2023, well before Donald Trump had won the republican presidential nomination. It outlined a suite of very conservative policies that would, for example, outlaw the mailing of abortion pills and abolish the department of education. It even suggests a return to the gold standard. It became a democratic talking point, so much so that Trump repeatedly distanced himself from the plan and the au...
Feb 09, 2025•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast For centuries, scholars only had one version of the life of Margery Kempe, an English mystic who lived in the 14th and 15th centuries — until a ping pong match revealed her story in her own words. 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 Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Feb 09, 2025•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast A lot of labels have been applied to Trump's foreign policy approach. America First, Isolationist, transactional, imperialist, protectionist. "I'm a nationalist and a globalist" he told the Wall Street Journal during his first term. In his inaugural address last month , Trump made comments suggesting his foreign policy will be characterized by restraint, saying, in part, success should be defined by the "wars we never get into." Yet in the same address, he also said, the United States will take ...
Feb 07, 2025•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
