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National

- The Trump administration plans major cuts to long-term housing for homelessness: 2025 Nov 14

- She criticized President Trump during the shutdown. Now she's been put on leave: 2025 Nov 14

- Trump to address the affordability issue. And, Border Patrol heading to Charlotte: 2025 Nov 14

NATIONAL | UPDATED FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2025 • 10:21 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

The Trump administration plans major cuts to long-term housing for homelessness

By Jennifer Ludden

The Trump administration is upending its homelessness policy, with deep cuts to funding for long-term housing. Instead, it will shift money toward transitional housing that requires work and addiction treatment.

In a statement, the Department of Housing and Urban Development said the new policies will "restore accountability" and promote "self-sufficiency" by addressing the "root causes of homelessness, including illicit drugs and mental illness." It also noted that overall homelessness funding is going up, from $3.6 billion to $3.9 billion.

170,000 people could be at risk of losing their housing

Critics warn the major overhaul could put 170,000 people at risk of losing their housing again. And they say the timing is terrible. Normally, funding notices go out months earlier, but now programs around the country will have little time to start applying for new funding. And in many places, it will leave a months-long gap after current funding runs out and before new money flows.

"We'll move very, very fast," said HUD policy expert Robert Marbut, in response to such concerns. He also noted the federal shutdown delayed the funding notice, though homelessness advocates say it was already behind schedule before that.

In another change, HUD will no longer automatically renew existing programs — creating the possibility that formerly homeless people who've lived in subsidized housing for years will be forced out. The agency is also opening up more funding for faith-based groups.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness says the new policies could upend life for people who've found stability in permanent housing programs, many of them seniors or disabled. "HUD's new funding priorities slam the door on them, their providers, and their communities. Make no mistake: homelessness will only increase because of this reckless and irresponsible decision," CEO Ann Oliva said in a statement.

The new policies could also shift more funding to places that enforce bans on homeless encampments.

"Donald Trump's approach to homelessness does nothing to address the sky-high cost of rent, which remains the main cause of homelessness," Jesse Rabinowitz of the National Homelessness Law Center said in a statement.

The funding shift reflects a conservative backlash to longstanding policies

For two decades, federal funding has prioritized getting people into permanent housing and then offering them treatment. That policy is called Housing First and has long had bipartisan support. Backers say the approach has a proven track record of keeping people off the streets.

But critics counter that it has failed to stem the steady rise of homelessness to what are now historic levels.

Those critics include President Trump, who has long pushed cities to clear homeless encampments from streets and parks. The new funding shift reflects an executive order he signed in July, which also sought to make it easier to confine unhoused people in mental institutions against their will.

Marbut, the HUD policy expert, also said Housing First policies have failed to address rising death rates among unhoused people from meth and fentanyl addiction.

"The influence of Housing First just became too powerful," says Stephen Eide, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think-tank. He calls it a top-down approach, and says for years it was hard to get funding unless a program followed that policy. Eide says that left out a large group of people who may not need permanent housing or who may want the enforced sobriety it does not offer.

"I think what we're going to be looking for is a reinvestment in transitional housing," he says. That means places people can stay for 18 months or so to get sober, or recover in other ways, and then — ideally — move out and succeed on their own.

There's broad agreement that the U.S. needs more of every kind of support for homeless people: permanent housing, rehab and mental illness treatment. But critics of HUD's shift fear this may make it harder for some to get help.

"It is moving away from trauma-informed care, and that's problematic," says Stephanie Klasky-Gamer, president and CEO of LA Family Housing in Los Angeles.

For example, she thinks this will lead more shelters to bar people unless they're already sober or enrolled in recovery or mental health care. But that's a high bar for many people, she says, and it could backfire.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5553561

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2025 GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN | UPDATED FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2025 • 9:44 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

She criticized President Trump during the shutdown. Now she's been put on leave

By Andrea Hsu

Jenna Norton, a program director at the National Institutes of Health, says she has been put on paid leave following the end of the government shutdown.

"I was not given a reason for being put on leave, but I strongly suspect it is because I have been speaking up in my personal capacity about the harms that I have been witnessing inside the National Institutes of Health," she said in a video posted to TikTok.

The notice Norton received from human resources stated that the leave "is not being done for any disciplinary purpose."

Norton is among a number of federal employees who have been openly critical of the Trump administration, both before and during the 43-day shutdown.

In an interview with NPR in early October, she said she believed the Trump administration's deep funding and staffing cuts have created a situation inside NIH that is far worse than the public realizes.

"I feel like I have this front row seat to the destruction of our democracy," she said. "We are seeing it in real time with a president who is asking us to do things that are illegal and harmful to the American public."

NPR reached out to the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees NIH, for comment on Norton's leave status but did not immediately receive a response.

On Thursday, the Federal Unionists Network, a coalition of former and current federal workers and union members, announced that an Agriculture Department employee who worked on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) had also been put on leave.

Ellen Mei, who also serves as president of National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) Chapter 255, received a notice of proposed termination on Oct. 3, a day after she raised concerns about SNAP cuts in an interview on MSNBC, according to the Federal Unionists Network.

"I didn't leak secrets or share anything confidential," said Mei in a statement released by the group. "I told the truth about what's happening to hungry families and the people who serve them. I took an oath to serve the public — not to stay quiet while our government turns its back on the American people."

In a statement, a spokesperson for USDA told NPR that the department does not comment on individual personnel matters, adding: "During a lapse in appropriations, furloughed USDA employees are not authorized to perform any official duties, including speaking on behalf of the Department."

MSNBC prefaced Mei's interview by stating that she was not representing the government, but speaking in her own capacity.

Norton says she believes federal employees not only have a right but an obligation to speak publicly on matters of the public interest.

"Allowing civil servants to put up a red flag when we're seeing a problem is critical to maintaining our democracy," she told NPR in October. "These civil service protections aren't really about protecting me as a federal worker. They're about protecting our country."

Still, on Friday, Norton told NPR she knew she was putting her job at risk by speaking out.

"I was never under the impression that my rights would be respected," she said. "I also recognized… that if you don't assert your rights because you're afraid, or because you're demoralized, or for whatever reason, then you've already given them up. You've let them be taken away. And I was determined not to do that."

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5608969

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UP FIRST NEWSLETTER | FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2025 • 7:11 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Trump to address the affordability issue. And, Border Patrol heading to Charlotte

By Brittney Melton

Good morning. You're reading the Up First newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox, and listen to the Up First podcast for all the news you need to start your day.

Today's top stories

The White House says newly released Jeffrey Epstein documents don't prove any wrongdoing by President Trump. Within the more than 1,000 mentions of Trump in the documents, an email says Trump spent hours at the convicted sex offender's home with a victim. Republican strategist Alex Conant says the documents may not necessarily change people's minds for the next election, but it makes for a not-so-good week for the president.

- 🎧 Conant says that the White House should have handled the Epstein story differently by releasing all the information they had. The White House claims it has been transparent about the situation, but at the same time, Trump doesn't want to answer questions about Epstein, NPR's Deepa Shivaram tells Up First. Conant points out that Trump's strategy is to deflect, attack and then change the story, but due to the slow drip of the Epstein story, it has been harder for the president to overcome this scandal.

The Trump administration has selected Charlotte, N.C., as the next city for its immigration crackdown, according to Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden. The sheriff said yesterday that federal officials contacted him and could arrive as early as tomorrow. The development comes as some Border Patrol agents are leaving Chicago, after weeks of aggressive raids there.

- 🎧 Charlotte drew national attention this fall following the fatal stabbing of a Ukrainian woman on public transit, says Nick de la Canal with NPR network station WFAE. The suspect was not an immigrant, but Republicans and the White House criticized the city's Democratic mayor for the crime. Violent crime is down 20% over the last year, according to de la Canal, but there have still been calls for the National Guard to deploy to the area. It is currently unknown how many agents are expected to arrive in the city, and the community has been reacting with fear to the news, despite advocacy groups urging calm.

Trump will soon travel across the U.S. to address the economic hardship Americans are feeling, a senior administration official told NPR. Trump's message will be that, while some things have improved, there is still more work to be done. This comes as the president revives the talking point of making America affordable again — a pledge that helped him win the White House again but that has not been much of a focus the past eight months. Currently, voters rank the economy and cost of living as their top concerns in polls, and many blame Trump's policies for exacerbating these issues.

Today's listen

Exercise appears to be more popular than ever in the U.S., from fitness influencers sharing gym tips on social media to fitness being a focus in our politics. Data also shows more Americans are exercising. But what caused this shift? It's Been A Minute's Brittany Luse uncovers the answer to that question and more with guests Jonquilyn Hill, host of Vox's Explain it to Me podcast, and Shelly McKenzie, author of Getting Physical: the Rise of Fitness Culture in America. Listen to the discussion or read the transcript here.

Weekend picks

Check out what Nuremberg explores the relationship between Nazi Germany's number two, Hermann Göring, and Douglas Kelley, the psychiatrist assigned to monitor him. Morning Edition host Leila Fadel spoke with writer-director James Vanderbilt about what makes the story so relevant now.

📺 TV: If you like The West Wing, you might like Death by Lightning. The four-part miniseries pits President James Garfield against Charles Guiteau, the disgruntled would-be political operative who assassinated him.

📚 Books: Sen. John Fetterman, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, spoke with All Things Considered about his new memoir, Unfettered, which recounts his 2022 Senate campaign during which he suffered a stroke and battled deep depression. Plus, five more new releases from this week.

🎵 Music: With the end of 2025 nearing, All Songs Considered has updated its running playlists of this year's best songs.

❓ Quiz: A decent score of 7/10, I know I could have done better, but luckily I have you to avenge me. Good luck!

3 things to know before you go

1. Disney CEO Bob Iger indicated yesterday that the entertainment conglomerate is in talks with AI companies to develop tools Disney+ subscribers could use to generate their own content on the platform.

2. Michael Jackson's "Thriller" climbed up Billboard's Hot 100 during spooky season, marking the sixth consecutive decade in which he has achieved at least one top 10 hit. This sets an all-time chart record.

3. This week's NPR Far-Flung Postcard series takes you aboard the CCGS Louis S. St-Laurent, a Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker ship, where you can see a polar bear.

This newsletter was edited by Obed Manuel.

Transcript

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

President Trump ends the week in conflict with the House of Representatives.

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

A meeting in the White House Situation Room was just one of the tactics used in response to a new eruption of questions about Jeffrey Epstein. How does this end?

INSKEEP: I'm Steve Inskeep with Leila Fadel, and this is UP FIRST from NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

INSKEEP: Border Patrol agents are packing up in Chicago. Charlotte, North Carolina, is preparing for their arrival. City leaders say they got almost no details.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

JD MAZUERA ARIAS: The public has the right to know what's happening and why it's happening.

INSKEEP: What's driving this sudden move, and why Charlotte?

FADEL: And economists are telling the cost of the longest government shutdown in American history.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

KEVIN HASSETT: Our estimate of the White House is that each week that we were shut down is worth about $15 billion off of GDP.

FADEL: Is some of that money lost forever? Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

FADEL: President Trump is finishing this week in conflict with a majority of the House of Representatives.

INSKEEP: That conflict emerged just as the House returned to work and reopened the government. Some Republicans joined Democrats to revive discussions of Jeffrey Epstein. As we have reported, a House committee released 23,000 documents about the convicted sex offender. The more than 1,000 mentions of Trump in those documents include an email saying Trump spent hours at Epstein's house with a victim, and another in which Epstein says Trump, quote, "knew about the girls."

FADEL: To discuss the White House's response, we have NPR White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram with us. Good morning.

DEEPA SHIVARAM, BYLINE: Hey, Leila.

FADEL: Hey. So the release of these documents has been a key demand of the president's supporters. What's the reaction been to this latest release of files?

SHIVARAM: Well, Republican political strategist Alex Conant said the news around these documents isn't necessarily changing people's minds in the next election, say, but it doesn't exactly add up to a good week for Trump.

ALEX CONANT: And I don't know that it is damaging, but it's very distracting. You know, with the government reopening, Trump arguably had a great week, but instead, everyone's talking about this Epstein story, and it just won't go away.

SHIVARAM: The White House says these documents don't prove anything. They say that Trump did nothing wrong. And the White House and the president are trying to frame the release of these documents as a distraction. They're saying that Democrats who released some of these files ahead of the House oversight committee's release are trying to take attention away from the government shutdown ending. Trump on Truth Social called it the Jeffrey Epstein hoax and said Democrats are trying to use it to, quote, "deflect from their massive failures."

FADEL: Right, but it was also Republicans who wanted these released - some Republicans. Well, the other thing that happened this week is the House reached enough signatures for a discharge petition to force the release of more documents from the Department of Justice. Does the White House feel any added pressure from this petition?

SHIVARAM: Right. So this petition that we're talking about requires 218 votes. That's, of course, the majority of the House members. And what it does is force a vote on any issue, even if House leadership doesn't want it. It's really rare that a petition would come together in the first place and even more rare in this political environment when we don't really see any level of bipartisanship.

FADEL: True.

SHIVARAM: And one of the Republicans that's working with Democrats on this is Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert. She's been an ally of Trump's, but she signed on to this petition, and she was called into the White House for a meeting in the Situation Room, where the Epstein files and this petition were discussed. It was kind of seen as this potential pressure campaign from the White House. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about this meeting in the briefing earlier this week, and she said that the White House was just being transparent with members of Congress, and Boebert herself spoke to Colorado Public Radio about.

LAUREN BOEBERT: There was no pressure, and I mean, everybody was great and worked just well with me.

SHIVARAM: So it's not fully clear what happened inside the Situation Room, but the thing with this petition to keep in mind is that it probably isn't going to go anywhere after this House vote. The Senate is controlled by Republicans. They're probably not going to take up this vote, and even if they did and it passed, Trump himself is the one who'd have to sign it into law, which is even less likely to happen.

FADEL: OK. So if this petition is likely to die, is the White House hoping then this just all goes away after that?

SHIVARAM: Yeah. You know, I talked to Conant about that, too, and he says the White House should have handled this Epstein story very differently, by putting out all the information that they have. Now, the White House says that they've been transparent, but at the same time, Trump uncharacteristically doesn't seem to want to answer questions about it, and keep in mind, there's been a lot of public interest in Epstein, in Trump's relationship with him, what these documents from the DOJ might say. And, you know, Trump has survived many political scandals before - right? - but Conant says that Trump's strategy typically has been deflect, deflect, attack, attack and then try to change the story. But because of the slow drip of this Epstein story, because this was a campaign promise that Trump made to release these documents, he just can't shake this story, and he's really been unable to move beyond it.

FADEL: NPR's Deepa Shivaram. Thank you, Deepa.

SHIVARAM: Thanks.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

FADEL: The sheriff in Charlotte, North Carolina, says the Trump administration has selected that city for its next immigration crackdown.

INSKEEP: Now, Charlotte is in Mecklenburg County, and the county sheriff there says federal officials have told him that agents could arrive as soon as tomorrow. And that's all he knows. This is happening as some Border Patrol agents are leaving Chicago after weeks of aggressive raids.

FADEL: Nick de la Canal, with member station WFAE in Charlotte, has been following developments and joins us now. Nick, what do we know so far about agents coming to Charlotte?

NICK DE LA CANAL, BYLINE: Well, we first started hearing reports a few days ago that this could be happening, but city officials said they were completely in the dark. And then yesterday, the Mecklenburg County sheriff, Garry McFadden, said he was contacted by two federal officials who told him Border Patrol agents will be arriving, possibly Saturday or early next week. Now, there's still a lot that we don't know, like how many agents are coming, how long they plan to stay, what their assignment is. Although perhaps we could look to Chicago as a precedent. The sheriff, who is a Democrat, said he's not getting involved in any possible operation, and Charlotte police put out a statement saying they don't participate with federal immigration enforcement. We did reach out to the Department of Homeland Security, and they told us they don't comment on potential operations.

FADEL: OK. So very little detail. How is the community reacting?

DE LA CANAL: Well, there's definitely fear, even though advocacy groups have been urging calm. I spoke with Daniela Andrade with the Carolina Migrant Network, and she says that their ICE hotline has been ringing off the hook over the last few days, mostly with false reports.

DANIELA ANDRADE: People have been calling, reporting anything they see on the street, which sometimes might be just CMPD or something completely different. Most of these cases right now are not ICE, but it's just that fear in general that's already in our community.

DE LA CANAL: And CMPD is the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, by the way. Also, some Latino businesses shared photos on social media yesterday of empty parking lots in what are normally bustling immigrant shopping centers.

FADEL: And what are local officials telling people?

DE LA CANAL: Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles has released a statement saying that the city is committed to following the law while protecting civil rights. Some city council members are also speaking up, including a councilman-elect, JD Mazuera Arias, who himself is an immigrant. He told his community to take a deep breath, not to keep kids home from school or skip work out of fear. And he says Customs and Border Protection need to be transparent with residents and law enforcement.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MAZUERA ARIAS: Our community deserves clarity. The sheriff's department deserves clarity. If there is an operation or presence in Charlotte, the public has the right to know what's happening and why it's happening.

FADEL: So that question of why, do you have any idea why Border Patrol agents are heading to Charlotte or appear to be heading there?

DE LA CANAL: Yeah. We really don't have any idea. We have seen ICE arrests in Charlotte, like in other cities. There was a workplace raid this summer and some isolated arrests but never Border Patrol agents, as far as we know. Now, the city did draw national attention earlier this fall following the fatal stabbing of a Ukrainian woman on the light-rail. The suspect was not an immigrant, however. Republicans and the White House directed a lot of criticism at the city's Democratic mayor for that. And there have been calls for the National Guard, even though violent crime is down 20% over last year.

FADEL: Nick de la Canal with member station WFAE. Thank you, Nick.

DE LA CANAL: Thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

FADEL: Now that the government shutdown is over, the damage assessments have begun.

INSKEEP: Federal workers missed paychecks. Many people missed flights. Millions missed payments to help them buy food. Gradually, all that is now being corrected, but what are the lasting economic costs?

FADEL: NPR's Scott Horsley joins us now to help tally it up. Good morning, Scott.

SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Good morning.

FADEL: OK. So this was the longest government shutdown on record. Is it also the most costly?

HORSLEY: Almost certainly. Kevin Hassett, who directs the National Economic Council, told the Economic Club of Washington this week the bill will likely be in the neighborhood of $90 billion.

FADEL: Wow.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

HASSETT: Our estimate at the White House is that each week that we were shut down is worth about $15 billion off of GDP. I think the Goldman guys have added all that up and guessed that it's between 1 and 1.5% reduction in the growth rate of GDP this quarter.

HORSLEY: Now, some of that economic activity is not really lost. It's just postponed. Government workers who put off a big purchase during the shutdown might go out and spend that money once they get their back pay. But some of it won't be made up. You know, if you skipped a haircut during the shutdown, you're probably not going to get two haircuts to make up for it. Airlines are not going to recover all the money they lost.

FADEL: Yeah.

HORSLEY: So while some of the drop in GDP is merely a timing shift, some of it is gone for good.

FADEL: And what about jobs? What's been the effect?

HORSLEY: Well, we don't have a good read on that. The government's monthly jobs tally was delayed by the shutdown, along with a lot of other government economic data. We should get the September jobs report pretty soon. That was almost finished when the shutdown began. But when it comes to the October report on both jobs and inflation, the government's really starting from scratch. And so it could take some time to reconstruct those. In fact, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt suggested this week the reports may never come out.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

KAROLINE LEAVITT: The Democrats may have permanently damaged the federal statistical system with October CPI and jobs reports likely never being released. And all of that economic data released will be permanently impaired, leaving our policymakers at the Fed flying blind at a critical period.

HORSLEY: Now, after previous government shutdowns, a lot of economic reports were late coming out. But the government has never skipped issuing a major economic report altogether. And most of the experts I talked to think the number crunchers will try very hard to avoid that this time. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which compiles both the jobs and inflation reports, put a note on its website yesterday, saying it's assessing the situation and will issue an updated release schedule soon. And the bureau also thanked people for their patience.

FADEL: Is the Fed, though, really flying blind here?

HORSLEY: No, although certainly its visibility is not as good as policymakers would like. During the shutdown, the Fed and others looked to other sources of information about the job market and prices. And while that's not as good as the missing government data, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell says he thinks he and his colleagues would know if there were a sudden shift in the economy. The Fed holds its next interest rate meeting in a little less than four weeks, and by that time, we may have some additional government data. But, you know, unless the numbers are really clear-cut one way or another, it could still be a close call. Right now, markets think it's pretty much a coin toss whether the Fed keeps cutting interest rates by another quarter point in December or takes a break and holds rates steady.

FADEL: NPR's Scott Horsley. Thank you, Scott.

HORSLEY: You're welcome.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

FADEL: And that's UP FIRST for Friday, November 14. I'm Leila Fadel.

INSKEEP: And I'm Steve Inskeep. This Sunday, we'll follow up on a big story. President Trump promised a Gaza peace plan would bring an end to the war between Hamas and Israel.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Can you believe it? And it's going to hold up, too. It's going to hold up.

INSKEEP: OK. It's been a little over a month since the ceasefire went into effect, and forward progress has stalled.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Until all of the bodies of the hostages are returned, from Israel's point of view, the next phase doesn't move forward.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Israel and Hamas have accused each other of violations, but it is really President Trump who's holding it together.

INSKEEP: This weekend on The Sunday Story, what will it take to keep a peace process on track? Listen to The Sunday Story right here on NPR's UP FIRST podcast.

FADEL: Today's episode of UP FIRST was edited by Dana Farrington, Susanna Capelouto, Rafael Nam, Mohamad ElBardicy and H.J. Mai. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Lindsay Totty. We get engineering support from Stacey Abbott, and our technical director is Carleigh Strange. Our executive producer is Jay Shaylor. Join us again tomorrow.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/g-s1-97813

World

- Russia's massive attack on Kyiv kills at least 4 people, injures dozens of others: 2025 Nov 14

- A decade after the Bataclan attacks, France is still grappling with how to remember: 2025 Nov 13

- Israel deported Palestinian prisoners to Egypt. Some Israelis question the practice: 2025 Nov 13

- Tatsuya Nakadai, an icon of Japanese cinema, has died at 92: 2025 Nov 12

- Israel's president says 'shocking' settler violence against Palestinians must end: 2025 Nov 12

- U.S. troops ramp their presence in Central and South America as President Maduro mobilizes forces: 2025 Nov 12

- Greetings from the Arctic Circle, where an icebreaker ship drew polar bears' attention: 2025 Nov 12

UKRAINE INVASION — EXPLAINED | FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2025 • 3:46 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Russia's massive attack on Kyiv kills at least 4 people, injures dozens of others

By The Associated Press

KYIV, Ukraine — Four people were killed after Russia unleashed a massive combined attack on Kyiv early Friday, sparking fires and scattering debris across many districts of the capital, Ukrainian authorities said.

At least 27 people were injured as emergency crews responded to multiple strikes, said Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv's military administration. At least 430 drones and 18 missiles were used in the attack across the country, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

He said the attack, which struck other regions of the country, was targeting Kyiv. "A specially calculated attack to cause as much harm as possible to people and civilians," Zelenskyy said in a post on Telegram. He added the Azerbaijan Embassy was damaged by fragments of an Iskander missile.

Fifteen people were hospitalized, including one man in critical condition and a pregnant woman, after a series of powerful explosions sounded in the city and airs defenses were activated.

City authorities warned that power and water outages are possible.

In the Darnytskyi district, debris landed in the yard of a residential building and on the grounds of an educational facility. A car caught fire after being hit by falling fragments.

In the Dniprovskyi district, debris damaged three apartment buildings, a private household and caused a fire in an open area.

In the Podilskyi district, five residential buildings and a nonresidential structure were damaged.

In the Shevchenkivskyi district, falling debris sparked a fire in an open area near a medical facility and inside a nonresidential building.

In the Holosiivskyi district, debris ignited a fire at a medical facility and damaged another nonresidential building.

In the Desnianskyi district, fires were recorded in two residential buildings.

In the Solomianskyi district, a fire broke out on the roof of a residential building.

In the Sviatoshynskyi district, debris caused a fire in a private home.

In the Kyiv region, Russian strikes damaged critical infrastructure and private homes, injuring at least one civilian, regional head Mykola Kalashnyk said. A 55-year-old man in Bila Tserkva suffered thermal burns and was hospitalized, he said. Fires broke out in private houses in the capital's suburbs.

The strike came as European Union officials warned this week that Ukraine must continue to crack down on corruption following a major graft scandal that has put top nuclear energy officials under scrutiny. But they also offered assurances that aid will continue to flow as Kyiv strains to hold back Russia's invasion.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5608915

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EUROPE | THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2025 • 2:33 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

A decade after the Bataclan attacks, France is still grappling with how to remember

By Rebecca Rosman

Heard on All Things Considered

PARIS — Arthur Dénouveaux's memories of Nov. 13, 2015, aren't exactly hazy. Nor are they perfect.

"What I remember from that night are a few very clear pictures," he says.

Dénouveaux was one of around 1,500 people inside the Bataclan concert hall to see the American rock band Eagles of Death Metal, when gunmen linked to the Islamic State opened fire.

What he remembers next are fragments.

There was the muzzle flash coming out of the gunmen's Kalashnikovs. Being pushed to the floor as the crowd scrambled. A girl "completely lost," staring toward the shooters before others pulled her down.

Then Dénouveaux remembers crawling outside.

"Finding myself under the night sky in Paris," he says, "and saying to myself, 'Hey, I'm free again.'"

Across Paris that night, 130 people were killed at cafés, the national soccer stadium and the Bataclan. Ten years later, France is still wrestling with how to remember the deadliest attack on its soil in modern history and how to live with it.

The country has built an extensive system of remembrance. There have been books, documentaries, plaques and memorials across the city. A landmark 10-month terrorism trial ended in 2022 with the conviction of 20 men, including the only surviving member of the group that carried out the attacks.

On Thursday, President Emmanuel Macron visited each of the attack sites before inaugurating a new memorial garden behind Paris City Hall. At the Place de la République this week, people placed flowers and lit candles at a makeshift memorial.

For some, like Paris resident Anaelle Baheux, who lives just steps from one of the cafés attacked that night, these rituals still matter.

"It's reassuring to see that people didn't forget what happened," she says.

But even as the rituals deepen, new research shows the details of that night are already fading from collective memory — and a study is offering insights into why some people recover from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, more easily than others.

Denis Peschanski, a historian, has been co-leading a 12-year study examining how the Nov. 13 attacks are remembered across French society. The project has followed nearly 1,000 people — survivors, victims' families, first responders and ordinary citizens — interviewing them at regular intervals to track how their recollections change over time.

"It's an interesting question, why did people forget," Peschanski says.

He says one pattern stands out: While most people still remember the Bataclan vividly, their recollections of what happened at the cafés and the national stadium are "foggier," if not forgotten altogether.

For survivors from those sites, Peschanski calls this a "double peine" — a double punishment. They live not only with trauma, but also with the feeling that their part of the story has faded from public memory.

Alongside the national memory study, a team of neuroscientists has spent the past decade studying trauma on an individual level, tracking about 200 survivors through regular MRI scans and psychological assessments.

Pierre Gagnepain, one of the lead researchers, says early treatment approaches often discouraged the idea of intentionally trying to suppress traumatic memories.

"For a long time, people thought that suppression was not good, that trying to block memory made things even worse," Gagnepain says. "People used to say it would cause even more intrusive memories."

But their initial findings suggest the opposite: suppression can, in fact, be part of recovery.

"What's important to understand is that forgetting — or suppression — doesn't mean you don't remember what happened to you," Gagnepain says. "It's about making the memory less present, less vivid, less accessible. People can still describe what they went through. It's just that the memory becomes less intrusive, less invading."

The science suggests that memory blurs not because people don't care, but because the mind adapts.

MRI findings from this study show that when memory control networks begin to recover — meaning when certain neural connections are strengthened and the brain's ability to inhibit intrusive thoughts is restored — survivors of traumatic events are less likely to suffer persistent intrusive symptoms of PTSD.

But not everyone. About a third of survivors in the study remain "chronic" cases, stuck in a state where fear and memory remain tightly linked.

Bataclan survivor Arthur Dénouveaux wasn't part of the MRI research, but he recognizes the distinction. He says his personal memories remain accessible without overwhelming him.

"You know, I can touch them. I can feel them," he says. "It's not just something out of thin air. My body was there. My mind was there."

For the past decade, Dénouveaux has served as president of Life for Paris, a support group created weeks after the attacks to help survivors navigate medical care, bureaucracy and years of legal proceedings that followed.

From the start, he says, the group intended to disband after the 10th anniversary.

"It feels like that point in time when you can say, 'No, I'm not a victim anymore. I have been a victim. I used to be a victim,'" he says.

That doesn't mean forgetting — for Dénouveaux or for France. Moving forward, he says, is its own kind of healing.

Transcript

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

Today marks 10 years since the deadliest attack on French soil since the Second World War. Terrorists linked to the Islamic state went on a killing rampage across Paris, targeting cafes, a soccer stadium and a concert hall. One hundred-thirty people were killed. As France remembers the dead, scientists are also studying survivors to see how their brains have been reshaped by trauma. Rebecca Rosman reports.

REBECCA ROSMAN, BYLINE: Arthur Denouveaux's (ph) memories of what happened to him at the Bataclan concert hall aren't exactly hazy, nor are they perfect.

ARTHUR DENOUVEAUX: What I remember about that night are a few very clear pictures.

ROSMAN: Seeing the muzzle flashes of the terrorists' Kalashnikovs, being pushed to the floor as the crowd scrambled, a girl completely lost, staring in the direction of the attackers and people grabbing her to crouch down. Then he remembers crawling outside.

DENOUVEAUX: And just finding myself under the night sky in Paris and saying to myself, hey, I'm free again.

ROSMAN: Denouveaux was one of around 1,500 people who started his Friday night excited to see the American rock band, the Eagles of Death Metal.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ROSMAN: By the end of the night, 90 people had been killed inside the venue. Dozens more were murdered on cafe terraces. A third attack hit the national soccer stadium. The Islamic State claimed responsibility. In the years since, officials and survivors have worked to hold those responsible accountable. A landmark 10-month trial convicted 20 people. There have been books, documentaries, memorials, and this week, more remembrance.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Speaking French).

ROSMAN: On Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron visited the site of the attacks, following a national commemoration and the inauguration of a memorial garden behind city hall. In the past decade, scientists have been researching how to turn remembrance into healing, why some survivors move forward and why others remain stuck in their trauma. A team of neuroscientists has been following about 200 survivors, using regular MRI scans to track how their brains change over time. One of the lead researchers, Pierre Gagnepain, says the early ideas about trauma misunderstood the role of memory suppression.

PIERRE GAGNEPAIN: When you try to block memory, people used to say it will cause even more intrusive memory.

ROSMAN: But he says their findings suggest the opposite, that suppression can actually be part of recovery.

GAGNEPAIN: Well, it's important to understand that forgetting and suppression is not that you don't remember what happened to you. Forgetting is about making memory less present, less vivid, less accessible.

ROSMAN: People can still describe what they went through, he says, but the memory becomes less intrusive. The MRI scans show signs of the brain repairing itself. When the neural connections involved in memory control start to strengthen again, intrusive symptoms start to ease. Denouveaux, the Bataclan survivor, has also spent the last decade leading Life for Paris, a support group for survivors. He says the group always planned to disband after the 10th anniversary.

DENOUVEAUX: It feels like that point in time when you can say, no, I'm not a victim anymore. I have been a victim. I used to be a victim. And that's what we're trying to do with this association closing.

ROSMAN: That doesn't mean forgetting, for Denouveaux or for France. Moving forward, he says, is its own kind of healing, and maybe forgetting at least a little is how a country learns to live with what it can't erase. Rebecca Rosman, NPR News, Paris.

(SOUNDBITE OF SHABOOZEY SONG, "MY FAULT")

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5604194

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MIDDLE EAST CONFLICT | THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2025 • 5:00 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Israel deported Palestinian prisoners to Egypt. Some Israelis question the practice

By Shir David, Alon Avital

TEL AVIV, Israel — In exchange for Hamas freeing its final group of Israeli hostages, Israel released nearly 2,000 Palestinians from prison in October.

Most of the Palestinians released by Israel had been arrested in Gaza on suspicion of taking part in hostilities during the war and held without charge, and they were sent back to the territory. But 250 of them were serving long sentences for deadly attacks against Israelis.

For 154 of those prisoners, their freedom came with a major condition: They were sent into exile, never to return to their homes in the Palestinian territories. They were sent to Cairo, with their final destination still undetermined.

Israeli security experts say the deportation policy is intended to prevent released prisoners from returning to militant activity and posing a future threat to Israelis. But past cases suggest the policy of deporting Palestinian prisoners abroad can have unintended, long-term consequences for Israeli security.

Hamas leaders behind the Oct. 7 attack were released prisoners

Two prisoners released by Israel in a 2011 prisoner-hostage swap with Hamas ended up taking leadership roles with the militant group after being released, according to Israel's Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency.

Zaher Jabarin, deported to Turkey, began overseeing Hamas' financial operations, the Shin Bet said in a report. Another, Yahya Sinwar, became the Hamas leader in Gaza who orchestrated the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel — when 1,144 Israelis were killed, according to Israeli government figures, sparking the Gaza war.

Another notable case is Saleh al-Arouri, a founding commander of Hamas' military wing. He was released from Israeli prison and deported in 2010. Settling first in Syria and later moving between Turkey, Lebanon and Qatar, he is widely credited with building Hamas' West Bank militant networks and helping plan the Oct. 7 attack.

A mastermind of Hamas' hostage-taking strategy is now free

Among the prisoners released in October and deported are those responsible for some of the most notorious attacks against Israelis in recent decades.

One is Mahmoud Issa, who founded a Hamas unit decades ago that was responsible for abducting Israeli soldiers to use them as bargaining chips for pushing Israel to release Palestinian prisoners. He was arrested in 1993 and sentenced to life imprisonment, convicted for abducting and killing an Israeli police officer.

Another is Imad Qawasmeh, a Hamas operative sent abroad in the recent deal, who was incarcerated for more than 20 years in connection with a pair of suicide bombings that killed 16 Israelis in the southern city of Beersheba in 2004.

The Israeli debate about deporting Palestinian prisoners

Some Israeli security analysts say deporting high-risk prisoners abroad is better than allowing them to return to their families and communities in the Palestinian territories. They argue that the distance reduces the released prisoners' ability to resume operational roles in militant groups like Hamas.

Deportation can also decrease the influence they have on Palestinian communities in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, where they could otherwise inspire further violence toward Israel, said Michael Milshtein, an Israeli expert in Palestinian affairs at Tel Aviv University and former Israeli military intelligence officer.

"It can be better than having them here, mainly when it comes to those who are very experienced, admired and will contribute significantly to the terror infrastructure," said Kobi Michaeli, an Israeli security expert with the Institute for National Security Studies and the Misgav Institute think tanks.

The effect of deportation, from a Palestinian perspective

Palestinian human rights advocates criticize the deportations, which prisoners agreed to under conditions of imprisonment, as forcible displacement. Israeli analysts defend the practice, saying prisoners were offered a choice to remain incarcerated or be freed and deported.

The majority of Palestinian prisoners' close relatives were barred by Israeli authorities from traveling abroad to greet their deported relatives after the most recent prisoner release, according to Qadura Fares, a veteran Palestinian prisoner advocate and the former head of prisoner affairs for the Palestinian Authority. Fares says the families were told the restriction was for security reasons.

Fares himself was imprisoned in Israel in 1981, charged with being part of a militant squad that obtained weapons and conducted attacks, and was released to the West Bank in 1994 as part of an Israeli-Palestinian agreement.

"Every prisoner dreams of being free in his own environment, in his town or village, among his family and friends, where people know him and where he has personal and social status," Fares told NPR. "Israel thinks that it can distance these people from their homeland in order to stop them from influencing their societies, but it is a mistake. If a prisoner is released to a normal and familiar environment, he adapts and lives a normal life."

But Israel's Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency suggests otherwise. A report by the Israeli parliament's research arm, The Knesset Research and Information Center, cites Shin Bet figures that about 75% of the Palestinian prisoners released in the 2011 prisoner-hostage deal returned to militant activity. The figures do not account for prisoners who are no longer alive.

When asked whether deportation could serve as a form of punishment, Michaeli dismissed the idea: "I think that for these people to live in Doha or in Istanbul under the hospitality of the [Qataris] and the Turks, is not a punishment."

The Shin Bet declined NPR's request for comment on Israel's deportation policy.

The impact of Israel's recent strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar

If released prisoners end up in cities like Qatar's capital of Doha, or Istanbul and Ankara in Turkey, they could be in "safe zones" enabling released prisoners to operate more freely and play a future role in groups like Hamas, Michaeli explained.

"They have a sort of immunity, because Israel will not target them, at least not under the current circumstances," Michaeli said.

Israel is widely believed to be behind one assassination of a Hamas figure in a Gulf state in the past, but its strike in September on Hamas leaders in Qatar angered the U.S. and "was a lesson for Israel: You cannot really assassinate anyone in Hamas any place you want, because there is a price for moves like that," said Milshtein.

Israel could pursue these individuals abroad at a later date, but the large-scale release of high-profile prisoners will place a heavy burden on Israel's intelligence agencies, requiring ongoing surveillance to prevent future attacks, writes Israeli analyst Yoni Ben Menachem of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a conservative Israeli think tank.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Embassy in Cairo told NPR that the 154 prisoners deported last month were initially put up in Renaissance Cairo Mirage City Hotel, a high-end Marriott hotel. But after the Daily Mail reported on their location, dubbing it "Hotel Hamas," they were transferred to another hotel along the Gulf of Suez in the city of Ain Sokhna, about an hour and a half outside of Cairo, the embassy said.

Israel and Egypt have not commented on their ultimate destination.

Nuha Musleh in Ramallah, West Bank, Ahmad Abuhamda in Cairo and Daniel Estrin in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed to this story.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5604397

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OBITUARIES | WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2025 • 5:52 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Tatsuya Nakadai, an icon of Japanese cinema, has died at 92

By Alina Edwards

Tatsuya Nakadai, a veteran Japanese actor best known for films such as Ran, High and Low and Harakiri, died on Saturday at the age of 92. His collaborations with some of the greatest directors in Japan cemented him as an icon of the "Golden Age" of Japanese cinema.

He died from pneumonia, according to a statement from Mumeijuku, the acting school and theater company that Nakadai founded.

Nakadai began his career as a theater actor, and remained committed to the stage throughout his life — in part because, unlike many actors at the time, he declined to sign an exclusive contract with a film studio. Doing so also gave him freedom to take on different roles — in samurai epics, realist dramas, crime thrillers, and even science fiction — and work with many different directors over the course of his career.

After a brief cameo in Akira Kurosawa's 1954 movie Seven Samurai, the film that also happens to be the actor's most revered internationally, he played the lead in Masaki Kobayashi's trilogy The Human Condition (1959–1961). The series stars Nakadai as a pacifist soldier in World War II-era Japan.

He credited much of his success to Kobayashi, whom he regarded as a mentor. "While I'm greatly indebted to Kurosawa," he told the Criterion Channel in an interview translated to English, "the director who discovered me and made me into the working actor that I am today was Masaki Kobayashi."

While filming The Human Condition, which took around four years to complete, Nakadai continued to work with Kurosawa. He starred alongside Toshiro Mifune, another legend of Japanese cinema, in Yojimbo in 1961 and High and Low in 1963.

With Harakiri, Nakadai's partnership with Kobayashi came to a crescendo. The 1962 film stars Nakadai as a lone samurai asking a local lord for permission to commit harakiri, a form of ritual suicide. The actor used a stylized storytelling voice to play the character as he narrates the events that led to his downfall, evoking kabuki, a form of traditional Japanese theater. In a 2005 interview, Nakadai described the film as a "drama of dialogue," which allowed him to apply what he'd learned on the stage to his performance on screen. No surprise, then, that the actor, who considered theater acting his primary profession, favored Harakiri above all his other films.

Perhaps his most famous role came in 1985 with Kurosawa's last epic, Ran, loosely based on King Lear. Although he was only in his fifties, Nakadai starred as the aging warlord Hidetora Ichimonji, donning heavy makeup in order to fully embody the character.

The plentiful opportunities that Nakadai enjoyed as an actor came with a great deal of pressure. "For me, my twenties were like climbing Mount Fuji with a heavy load on my back, huffing and puffing," he said in 2005. "It felt like I was climbing, and the heavy load was everyone's masterpieces."

The "heavy load" he bore as a significant contributor to the growth of Japanese cinema has not been overlooked in Japan. In 1996, he was awarded Japan's Medal with Purple Ribbon, honoring those with achievements in arts and academics, and in 2015, the emperor granted him the Order of Culture, the highest honor bestowed upon citizens with major achievements in the arts and sciences.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5605557

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MIDDLE EAST | WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2025 • 4:53 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Israel's president says 'shocking' settler violence against Palestinians must end

By The Associated Press

JERUSALEM — Israel's president and high-ranking military officials on Wednesday condemned attacks a day earlier by Jewish settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank, calling for an end to a growing wave of settler violence in the occupied territory.

President Isaac Herzog described the attacks as "shocking and serious," adding a rare and powerful voice to what has been muted criticism by top Israeli officials of the settler violence. Herzog's position, while largely ceremonial, is meant to serve as a moral compass and unifying force for the country.

Herzog said the violence committed by a "handful" of perpetrators "crosses a red line," adding in a social media post that "all state authorities must act decisively to eradicate the phenomenon."

His remarks, and those of two high-ranking military officials, came after dozens of masked Israeli settlers attacked the Palestinian villages of Beit Lid and Deir Sharaf in the West Bank on Tuesday, setting fire to vehicles and other property before clashing with Israeli soldiers.

In other developments Wednesday:

— Israel reopened a crossing into the northern Gaza Strip that had been closed for two months. The move was welcomed by officials at the United Nations, who say Israel has been too slow in surging humanitarian aid to the territory since a ceasefire began last month. Aid has been delivered into Gaza since Oct. 10 through two crossings in southern and central Gaza.

— The Israeli military said it killed four armed militants who posed an "immediate threat" in areas of southern Gaza under its control. In Khan Younis, one person was killed while approaching Israeli troops across the so-called yellow line. In Rafah, three people were killed while troops in the area were working to destroy underground tunnels.

Military leaders react to settler violence in the West Bank

The Israeli army's chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, echoed Herzog's condemnations of the West Bank violence, saying the military "will not tolerate the phenomena of a minority of criminals who tarnish a law-abiding public."

He said the army is committed to stopping violent acts committed by settlers, which he described as contrary to Israeli values and that "divert the attention of our forces from fulfilling their mission."

The chief of the military's Central Command, Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth, said responding to an "anarchist fringe" requires the use of significant resources that could otherwise be focused on bolstering security and conducting counterterrorism operations.

The army said the settlers who attacked the villages fled to a nearby industrial zone and attacked soldiers responding to the violence, damaging a military vehicle. Police said four Israelis were arrested, while the military said four Palestinians were wounded.

On Wednesday, police said three of the suspects were released and that one, a minor arrested on suspicion of arson and assault, will remain in custody for six more days, as ordered by a judge. Police said the actions of the three who were released are still under investigation "with the goal of bringing offenders to justice, regardless of their background."

Settler violence has surged

Tuesday's violence in the West Bank was the latest in a series of attacks by young settlers that have surged since the war in Gaza erupted two years ago. The attacks have intensified in recent weeks as Palestinians harvest their olive trees in an annual ritual.

The U.N. humanitarian office last week reported more Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank in October than in any other month since it began keeping track in 2006. There were over 260 attacks, the office said.

Palestinians and human rights workers accuse the Israeli army and police of failing to halt attacks by settlers. Israel's government is dominated by far-right proponents of the settler movement including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who formulates settlement policy, and Cabinet minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the nation's police force.

Muayyad Shaaban, who heads an office in the Palestinian Authority that is tracking the violence, said the settlers set fire to four dairy trucks, farmland, tin shacks and tents belonging to a Bedouin community.

He said the attacks were part of a campaign to drive Palestinians from their land and accused Israel of giving the settlers protection and immunity. He called for sanctions against groups that "sponsor and support the colonial settlement terrorism project."

Palestinians react angrily

In Beit Lid, residents said they don't want their lives ruled by fear of settler violence.

Mahmoud Edeis said the violence is undermining his family's right to live in safety.

"To feel that my children are safe, that when I go to sleep I can say, 'Okay, there's nothing (to worry about),'" he said. "But at any moment something could happen … This can't go on. It can't be that we keep living our whole lives in a state of fear and danger."

Amjad Amer Al-Juneidi, who works at a dairy factory that was attacked Tuesday, said the "fully organized" attack saw one person carrying gasoline-filled cans, another prying open the factory door with a crowbar and a third individual igniting the fuel.

"Their entry into the company wasn't random. It was organized, and they had a fully organized tactic for how to carry out the burning," Al-Juneidi said.

UN officials say more aid is needed in Gaza

While U.N. officials welcomed the Israeli decision to reopen the Zikim crossing into northern Gaza, they also reiterated criticism of Israel for not doing more.

Stephane Dujarric, the U.N. spokesperson, said Wednesday that humanitarian groups in Gaza are being hampered in their ability to distribute food once it arrives in the territory and having to "stretch out the available stocks."

The demand for baby formula, for example, far exceeds the current supply, UNICEF spokesperson Ricardo Pires told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Pires said there are also concerns about whether there will be enough syringes to carry out a vaccination campaign that began this month and will continue into January. He said there could be supply problems starting next month if Israel doesn't allow greater shipments into Gaza.

The Israeli agency in charge of humanitarian aid in Gaza, COGAT, said in a statement on Tuesday that "Israel is fully committed to its obligation to facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid trucks in accordance with the (ceasefire) agreement."

Full article: https://www.npr.org/g-s1-97616

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WORLD | WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2025 • 4:35 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

U.S. troops ramp their presence in Central and South America as President Maduro mobilizes forces

By Carrie Kahn

Heard on All Things Considered

Transcript

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

The nation's largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, has been making its way around the globe, but has now entered the waters under the control of U.S. Southern Command. That is the military command focused on Central and South America. The move highlights the growing tensions with Venezuela as the U.S. ramps up its presence in the region. Now, this all follows several rounds of deadly military strikes against boats and ships carrying people the Trump administration has called narcoterrorists. Venezuelan authorities say the buildup is a pretext for regime change in their country. For more, we're going to go to NPR's Carrie Kahn in neighboring Ecuador. Hey, Carrie.

CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: Hi, Scott.

DETROW: Do we know where the aircraft carrier Gerald Ford is right now?

KAHN: Not exactly. In a statement, the Pentagon said the huge ship is now under the jurisdiction of Southern Command, which encompasses a very large region near Latin America. But waiting for it is already a large U.S. military presence in the Caribbean. To date, those assets have struck 19 small boats suspected of running drugs and killed at least 76 people the U.S. says were all alleged drug traffickers.

Critics have been questioning the legality of these strikes and saying, even before the Gerald R. Ford arrives, look, there's already too much firepower in the region if all you're doing is interdicting these alleged small-time drug runners. And they say it's looking more like that show of force is about unseating Venezuela's leader, Nicolas Maduro, a longtime target of the U.S.

DETROW: What has Maduro said in response to all of this?

KAHN: He's made a big show of announcing what he's called this national plan to defend the homeland, including calling up troops or forces. His defense minister puts that force at 200,000. It's unclear if that's even possible. Vladimir Padrino, the defense minister, has been saying Venezuela does not want war.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

VLADIMIR PADRINO: (Speaking Spanish).

KAHN: But he says if the U.S. does actually attack Venezuela, they are going to have to go through a very determined people ready to defend until the death. He's been on repeat on state TV. He's handing out, like, weapons, moving what looks like very outdated military hardware around and sounding alarms since last night.

DETROW: What has the response been throughout the region as this U.S. military buildup has continued?

KAHN: Neighboring Colombia has been the loudest critic of the U.S. President Gustavo Petro there, a fellow leftist, has been sanctioned by the Trump administration. Trump has called him an illegal drug dealer. Petro says Colombia will no longer give drug intelligence to the U.S., and that's huge 'cause for decades, Colombia has been the U.S.' staunchest ally in the so-called war on drugs. The U.S. has spent billions cooperating with Colombia. A former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela, James Story, tells me, without Colombian cooperation, the U.S. is at a severe disadvantage.

JAMES STORY: ...Because it's the source country of most of the cocaine that flows north, as well as a good amount of the heroin. And if we're blind to what's happening on the ground in Colombia, we're not going to be as successful in stopping those drugs from reaching the United States.

KAHN: Britain says it's no longer going to cooperate on some intelligence sharing with the (inaudible) because of the U.S. boat strikes. An official who was not authorized to speak publicly told NPR that overall intelligence sharing remains strong, but certain U.S. requests are being denied because they do not align with British foreign policy. And also, France's foreign minister condemned the attacks. He's calling it a violation of international law. And both of those countries, of course, have territories in the Caribbean.

DETROW: That is NPR's Carrie Kahn joining us from Ecuador. Thank you so much.

KAHN: You're welcome.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5606972

FAR-FLUNG POSTCARDS | WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2025 • 11:35 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Greetings from the Arctic Circle, where an icebreaker ship drew polar bears' attention

By Jackie Northam

Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly series in which NPR's international team shares moments from their lives and work around the world.

Growing up in Canada, I always considered the Arctic part of my backyard, a part of the country's identity and history. So I was overjoyed several years ago when I got what I considered a dream assignment: a week-long voyage through the fabled Northwest Passage, a series of waterways high above the Arctic Circle.

I was aboard the CCGS Louis S. St-Laurent, a hulking Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker affectionately known by the crew as simply the Louis.

Ahead of that excursion, I had been doing month-long reporting rotations into Afghanistan and Pakistan, and was feeling ground down. All that evaporated once I was aboard the Louis. I felt my soul replenish with joy as I breathed in the frigid, clean air and gazed out at the endless expanse of ice — there were no buildings or boats, nor any hint of humankind for hundreds of miles in any direction. The ice twinkled with the light of the sun, which shone 24 hours a day at that time of year.

My entertainment was the polar bears like this one that every day lumbered up to the side of Louis, cocking their heads as if curious about who these interlopers were.

It was breathtaking to be where so few people on Earth have traveled, to feel the thick ice crack under the ship, to watch the polar bears approach the ship, all the while knowing this swiftly changing hinterland would never be the same.

I think often of that magical time when I read about massive cruise ships or oil tankers now regularly making their way through the Arctic. It breaks my heart thinking about the impact on the pristine region. It's selfish, but I'll always treasure the time I had to myself at the top of the world — and the majestic creatures that call it home.

See more photos from around the world:

- Greetings from Johannesburg, South Africa, where spring bursts with jacaranda blooms

- Greetings from high up in Colombia's Andes, where 'prairie-style meat' is a delicacy

- Greetings from an Indian Railways coach, with spectacular views from Mumbai to Goa

- Greetings from the Rhône Glacier, where a gash of pink highlights how it's melting

- Greetings from the Mediterranean, where dolphins swim alongside a migrant rescue ship

- Greetings from Kyiv, where you might stumble across Zelenskyy taking a stroll

Full article: https://www.npr.org/g-s1-95878

Law

- James Comey and Letitia James argue DOJ prosecutor was illegally appointed: 2025 Nov 13

LAW | THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2025 • 5:08 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

James Comey and Letitia James argue DOJ prosecutor was illegally appointed

By Ryan Lucas

Heard on All Things Considered

Transcript

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

Over the past two months, a prosecutor handpicked by President Trump has secured indictments against two of Trump's perceived enemies - former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Today, attorneys for Comey and James argued in federal court that the prosecutor was improperly appointed and their cases should be dismissed. NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas was in the courtroom and joins us now. Hi, Ryan.

RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Hi there.

CHANG: OK, so just remind us what these cases against Jim Comey and Tish James are about.

LUCAS: So first, just to be clear, Comey and James were charged separately, so these are two separate cases.

CHANG: Right.

LUCAS: Comey was charged in September with false statements and obstruction of a congressional proceeding. The case against him stems from testimony that he gave Congress back in 2020. He has pleaded not guilty. Letitia James, meanwhile, she was charged in early October with bank fraud and false statements to a financial institution. Those charges are tied to a house that she bought in Virginia in 2020. She has also pleaded not guilty.

But these cases against the both of them were presented to a grand jury by Lindsey Halligan. Halligan is a former White House aide and insurance lawyer who Trump handpicked to be the interim U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia after career prosecutors there had concluded that the evidence was too weak in both instances to move forward with the case. Now, both Comey and James are challenging the legality of Halligan's appointment, and so that's why their attorneys were in one courtroom together today, making their case before a federal judge.

CHANG: OK. And what did they say?

LUCAS: Well, there's a lot of overlap in what their attorneys had to say, but the heart of this particular legal dispute centers on laws that govern the temporary appointment of a U.S. attorney. I don't want to get too far into the weeds here, but the statute allows the attorney general to appoint an interim U.S. attorney for 120 days. Once those 120 days run out, if there's no Senate-confirmed U.S. attorney, then the local federal court can appoint its own candidate until the Senate confirms someone.

Now, both Comey and James argue that that 120-day limit is a one-time thing. In other words, the attorney general can't keep making interim appointments each with a 120-day time limit because that would gut the Senate's role in confirming U.S. attorneys. Now, the Justice Department, for its part, it argues that that interpretation is wrong. It says the attorney general can make multiple 120-day interim appointments, and it says the clock restarts with each one.

CHANG: OK. And now explain how does that factor specifically into the cases against Comey and against James?

LUCAS: Well, the key fact here is that someone already served for 120 days as interim U.S. attorney during this Trump administration. Trump pushed that person out in September after he had expressed reservations about pursuing these two specific cases, but because he had served on an interim basis for the full 120 days, Comey and James say that legally that means that Halligan cannot, and that means that Halligan was unlawfully appointed. And because of that, they say, the indictments that she secured against Comey and James are invalid and should be dismissed. Now, DOJ, for its part, it says that this dispute is at best - it called it a paperwork error, and it says Halligan has the full authority to pursue these prosecutions.

CHANG: OK. Well, Ryan, you were in the courtroom today. Did you get a sense of how the judge is going to rule?

LUCAS: Well, the judge presiding today was Judge Cameron McGowan Currie. She's usually based in South Carolina, but she was assigned to hear the legal challenges to Halligan's appointment. Now, Currie sounded skeptical of some of the Justice Department's positions. I wouldn't read into that too much. Today's hearing lasted only a little over an hour, and Judge Currie said at the end that she planned to rule on the matter before Thanksgiving, so we should have an answer in the next couple of weeks.

CHANG: That is NPR's Ryan Lucas. Thank you so much, Ryan.

LUCAS: Thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5607117

Politics

- Economic promises helped Trump get elected. Now he has an affordability problem: 2025 Nov 14

- Comey and James seek case dismissal, arguing prosecutor was illegally appointed: 2025 Nov 14

- The House is back. How do members feel?: 2025 Nov 13

- 'We were gone far too long.' House members reflect on longest shutdown: 2025 Nov 13

- The government shutdown is over, but not everything is back to normal: 2025 Nov 13

POLITICS | FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2025 • 5:00 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Economic promises helped Trump get elected. Now he has an affordability problem

By Tamara Keith

President Trump says he is going to "make America affordable again." It's a pledge he made frequently during the campaign. And now, after dropping it from his lexicon for more than eight months, he's saying it again as polls show voters rank the economy and cost of living as their top concern and blame Trump's policies for making things worse.

A senior administration official tells NPR Trump will soon travel around the country with a message that while some things have improved, there is more work to do to help people feeling economic strain. The official, who was not authorized to speak on the record, added that when it comes to affordability, "there's no finish line."

Thus far, Trump has spent far more time boasting about how great the economy and stock market are doing than acknowledging any economic anxiety.

"Record high, record high, record high," Trump said of the stock market last week at a business event in Florida.

"Costs are way down," Trump said at a late night signing ceremony in the Oval Office Wednesday. "My administration and our partners in Congress will continue our work to lower the cost of living, restore public safety, grow our economy and make America affordable again for all Americans."

Trump's affordability challenge marks a dramatic reversal of fortune for a president who returned to office on a promise to bring costs down and whose greatest political strength was on the economy. Now his approval rating on the economy is severely underwater.

After sweeping wins by Democrats in last week's elections where the cost-of-living was a key issue, Trump suddenly had a lot to say about "affordability." But he has frequently come across as dismissive and defensive.

"The affordability is much better with the Republicans," Trump said last week. "The only problem is the Republicans don't talk about it, and Republicans should start talking about it and use their heads."

But earlier this week when Fox News' Laura Ingraham pressed Trump on rising costs of things like coffee and ground beef, he called it a "con job by the Democrats."

Asked why people are anxious about the economy, Trump responded by questioning whether people really are saying that.

"I think polls are fake," Trump said. "We have the greatest economy we've ever had."

To support his positive outlook, Trump points to the booming stock market, his tariff policy and pledges by companies and countries to invest in the U.S.

Inflation this year has been persistent but not dramatic, at about 3%. Eggs have gotten cheaper since Trump took office, but other staples like ground beef and coffee are up. According to Gas Buddy, the average price of gasoline in the U.S. is $3.09 per gallon, slightly higher than this time last year.

"Consumer confidence is the lowest it's ever been," said Jason Furman, a professor of economics at Harvard. "People are really negative about inflation."

It's a political truth — and a pitfall for presidents — that people don't want to hear that everything is awesome if they are struggling.

Furman, who served in the Obama administration, says the messaging team in that White House was very cautious not to brag about the economy, as the nation emerged from the Great Recession.

"Because they thought anything we said positive about the economy risked people thinking President Obama was out of touch," said Furman. "I didn't see that type of reserve when Biden was president. He bragged about it quite a lot, and I think that [rang] hollow with a lot of people. And President Trump is even less reserved about his bragging."

Trump's insistence that the economy is great earned him a rebuke from Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. Appearing on the Sean Spicer Show on YouTube, Greene said she gives Trump credit for holding inflation steady.

"But that doesn't bring prices down," said Greene. "And so gaslighting the people and trying to tell them that prices have come down is not helping. It's actually infuriating people because people know what they are paying at the grocery store, they know what they're paying for their kid's clothes and school supplies. They know what they're paying for their electricity bills."

She called for compassion rather than lecturing.

Former Trump economic adviser Stephen Moore says there are three major cost issues that have to be addressed: grocery prices, home prices and health care costs.

"It is true factually that the average family has more purchasing power today than they did when Biden left office," said Moore. "And yet people don't feel it. You know, they're not feeling the love. And I can't explain why that is except that people tend to focus on things where their prices are rising."

In fact, purchasing power also grew during the Biden administration, because wages rose faster than costs. But voters didn't want to hear it then, and they are in no mood to hear it now.

"People are kind of in a crabby mood right now when it comes to the economy," said Moore.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5608348

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POLITICS | FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2025 • 1:42 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Comey and James seek case dismissal, arguing prosecutor was illegally appointed

By The Associated Press

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Lawyers for former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James asked a judge Thursday to dismiss the cases against them, saying the prosecutor who secured the indictments was illegally installed in the role.

U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie said she expects to decide by Thanksgiving on challenges to Lindsey Halligan's appointment as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. That decision could help determine the fate of the politically charged cases, which were both shepherded by the hastily installed Halligan and together have amplified concerns that the Justice Department is being used as a weapon to target President Donald Trump's perceived adversaries.

Halligan was installed in the job at Trump's urging by Attorney General Pam Bondi in September, just days before Comey was indicted, in what defense lawyers say was an end-run around the constitutional and statutory rules governing the appointment of U.S. attorneys. They say the maneuver was designed to ensure indictments against the president's political opponents after the prosecutor who had been overseeing the two investigations, but had not brought charges, was effectively forced out.

"Ms. Halligan was the sole prosecutor in the grand jury room, and when the sole prosecutor lacks the authority," said Ephraim McDowell, one of Comey's defense lawyers, "that's not going to be a harmless error."

U.S. attorneys, top federal prosecutors who oversee regional Justice Department outposts across the country, are typically nominated by the president and then confirmed by the Senate. Attorneys general do have the authority to name an interim U.S. attorney who can serve for 120 days, but lawyers for Comey and James argued that once that period expires, the law gives federal judges the exclusive say of who gets to fill the vacancy.

The interim US attorney resigned under pressure

After then-interim U.S. attorney Erik Siebert resigned in September while facing Trump administration pressure to bring charges against Comey and James, Bondi installed Halligan, a White House aide with no prior prosecutorial experience. The appointment followed a Trump post on Truth Social in which he complained to Bondi about the lack of prosecutorial action against his political enemies and said, "JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!"

Siebert had been appointed by Bondi in January to serve as interim U.S. attorney. Trump in May announced his intention to nominate him, and judges in the Eastern District unanimously agreed after his 120-day period expired that he should be retained in the role.

But after the Trump administration effectively pushed him out in September, the Justice Department again opted to make an interim appointment in place of the courts, something defense lawyers say it was not empowered under the law to do.

"If the government were to prevail here," McDowell said, then it "would never need to go through Senate confirmation again for U.S. attorneys." He said any dismissal of the indictment must be permanent, with no opportunity to bring the case again, to avoid rewarding the government for a violation.

The Justice Department defends Halligan's appointment

The Justice Department maintains that the law does not explicitly prohibit successive appointments of interim U.S. attorneys by the attorney general. Henry Whitaker, a lawyer for the department, argued that the indictment was properly returned by a grand jury and should not be dismissed over what he described as at most a paperwork or clerical error.

"The grand jury made a decision based on the facts and the law, and they followed their oath," Whitaker said.

He also said that even if there were questions about Halligan's appointment, they were resolved by the fact that Bondi had personally ratified the indictment and reviewed the grand jury proceedings. But Currie, the judge, questioned whether that was possible given that a section of the grand jury proceedings that were produced to her was, for unexplained reasons, missing a section.

A Justice Department spokesperson later said that there was no missing time and that the time period in question concerns when the grand jury was deliberating, which "would not be included in a transcription."

Comey has pleaded not guilty to charges of making a false statement and obstructing Congress, and James, a Democrat, has pleaded not guilty to mortgage fraud allegations. The challenges to Halligan's appointment are part of a multiprong effort to get the prosecutions tossed before trial. Their lawyers have separately argued that the prosecutions are improperly vindictive and motivated by the president's personal animus toward their clients and should therefore be dismissed.

Trump's history with Comey and James

Comey, as FBI director in the early months of Trump's first term, infuriated the president through his oversight of an investigation into potential ties between Russia and Trump's 2016 campaign. Trump fired Comey in May 2017. The two have been open adversaries since, with Comey labeling Trump "unethical" and comparing him to a Mafia boss and Trump branding Comey an "untruthful slime ball" and calling for him to be punished because of the Russia investigation.

James has been a frequent target of Trump's ire, especially since she won a staggering judgment against him and the Trump Organization in a lawsuit alleging he defrauded banks by overstating the value of his real estate holdings on financial statements. An appeals court overturned the fine, which had ballooned to more than $500 million with interest, but upheld a lower court's finding that Trump had committed fraud.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5608894

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POLITICS | THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2025 • 4:53 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

The House is back. How do members feel?

By Barbara Sprunt

Heard on All Things Considered

Transcript

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

The House of Representatives came back for one day this week after being gone for more than 50. During the government shutdown, the House was officially out of session. Some members did town halls back in their districts. Others came to the Capitol anyway. But as NPR's Barbara Sprunt reports, there was angst on all sides when everyone reassembled.

BARBARA SPRUNT, BYLINE: The House Rules Committee met earlier this week ahead of the full House coming back into session on Wednesday. And let's just say things were tense. Here's Jim McGovern, the top Democrat on the panel.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

JIM MCGOVERN: Long time no see. I hardly recognize you guys. Where the hell have you been?

SPRUNT: After repeated comments from Democrats about Republicans being on vacation during the shutdown, Chairwoman Virginia Foxx stepped in.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

VIRGINIA FOXX: I am sick and tired of hearing you all say we had an eight-week vacation.

YASSAMIN ANSARI: That's exactly what happened.

FOXX: I worked every day. I don't know about you.

ANSARI: I worked every single day as well.

FOXX: But I don't want to hear another soul say that.

ANSARI: We all worked every single...

SPRUNT: The House passed its version of a stopgap funding bill in mid-September. House Speaker Mike Johnson then sent lawmakers home. He was asked on the third day of the shutdown, why not stay?

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MIKE JOHNSON: My quick answer's very simple. The House did its job.

SPRUNT: Then he blamed Democratic leaders in the Senate for not doing theirs. Leadership on both sides of the aisle held press conferences almost every day of the shutdown, but there were no votes, no committee hearings. Wednesday was the first official day back in 54 days.

KEVIN KILEY: It's a lot more crowded here. You know, the halls have been pretty lonely.

SPRUNT: That's California Republican Kevin Kiley. He kept showing up to his Capitol office throughout the shutdown.

KILEY: To be honest with you, this has not been the finest hour for the United States Congress, having the House of Representatives cancel its sessions while so many people across the country were suffering.

SPRUNT: He said he used the time to work with a colleague on the other side of the aisle to address an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year. Those subsidies were central to the shutdown.

KILEY: That was, I guess, one advantage of being here is that we - I have had some constructive conversations like that. But of course, if the entire House was here, then we could have been having this sort of consensus-building process that you need to pass legislation like this.

SPRUNT: Fellow Republican Mark Alford of Missouri said the time back home was useful.

MARK ALFORD: Look, I've been here for three years. I got more done in my district than I think in the three years that I've been there. I've been able to visit farms. We went to businesses. We visited 14 of 18 rural hospitals in our district. And it gave us a real clear picture where America stands right now and what we can do to help.

SPRUNT: Meanwhile, Democrats are still fuming that the House was even sent home at all.

JULIE JOHNSON: This was a ridiculous thing.

SPRUNT: That's Julie Johnson, a freshman Democrat from Texas.

J JOHNSON: I think that the speaker really has exhibited some poor judgment, and it was disrespectful to the body. And then the speaker refusing to swear in a dully elected, that was poor form.

SPRUNT: She's referring to Arizona Democrat Adelita Grijalva, who won a special election in mid-September but wasn't sworn in until yesterday before any votes. The common refrain from Democrats, like New Mexico's Melanie Stansbury, is this.

MELANIE STANSBURY: The House has been completely closed and locked out, and there is all manner of legislative business that could have been going on, and we should have been here the entire time.

SPRUNT: Republican Steve Womack of Arkansas says he agrees with that.

STEVE WOMACK: Listen, I didn't want to go home in August. So to be gone for those five or six weeks and then turn around and do it again in October was just - that's just more than America should have to put up with.

SPRUNT: He's a senior appropriator, and he's now looking down the road at what lies ahead.

WOMACK: We're going to be putting Congress on the clock again in another 78, 79 days. We're going to be right back where we were. I just hope we don't put America back through the same nut roll.

SPRUNT: Funding for much of the government will run out again January 30.

Barbara Sprunt, NPR News, the Capital.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5607066

2025 GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN | THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2025 • 1:53 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

'We were gone far too long.' House members reflect on longest shutdown

By Barbara Sprunt

After narrowly approving a stopgap funding bill to end the government shutdown last night, the House of Representatives adjourned for the remainder of the week – marking one full day in session after being out for 54 days.

The Wednesday vote was the first time House members voted since House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., sent members home after the chamber passed its initial version of a continuing resolution in mid-September.

"The House did its job," Johnson said on the third day of the shutdown when asked why he wasn't having members stay in town. "The House will come back into session and do its work as soon as [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer allows us to reopen the government."

He kept his word but tensions were high when members returned this week.

"Long time, no see. I hardly recognize you guys," said House Rules Committee ranking member Jim McGovern, D-Mass., at a meeting. "Where the hell have you been?"

After repeated comments from Democrats about Republicans being on vacation during the shutdown, Chairwoman Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., stepped in.

"I am sick and tired of hearing you all say we had an eight-week vacation. I worked every day," she said. "I don't want to hear another soul say that."

Although House leadership in both parties held press conferences every day during the shutdown, there was no legislative business of the House for over seven weeks.

"The halls have been pretty, pretty lonely," said California Republican Kevin Kiley on Wednesday. Unlike Republicans, rank and file House Democrats were instructed by their leaders to come to D.C. regularly for caucus meetings.

But Kiley kept showing up to his Capitol office throughout the shutdown.

"This has not been the finest hour for the United States Congress, having the House of Representatives cancel its sessions while so many people across the country were suffering," he told NPR. "I don't think that either party comes out of this thing in the best light."

Kiley said he used the time to work with a colleague on the other side of the aisle to address an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year – the crux of the shutdown itself.

"That was, I guess, one advantage of being here – that I have had some constructive conversations like that," he said. "But of course, if the entire House was here, then we could have been having the sort of consensus building process that you need to pass legislation like this."

Other GOP members, like Missouri Rep. Mark Alford, said the time back home was useful.

"In a way, this time away working in the district has been very, very helpful," he told NPR. "I got more done in my district than I think in the three years that I've been [in Congress]. We went to farms, we went to businesses, we visited 14 of our 18 rural hospitals in our district, and it gave us a real clear picture of where America stands right now and what we can do to help."

Meanwhile, Democrats are still fuming that the chamber was sent home in the first place.

"I think that the speaker really has exhibited some poor judgment. I think it was disrespectful to the body," said Rep. Julie Johnson, D-Texas.

She called it "poor form" for the speaker not to swear in fellow Democrat Adelita Grijalva, who won an Arizona special election in mid-September and was waiting to be sworn in during the shutdown.

Grijalva told NPR's All Things Considered she thinks her support of the effort to release the Jeffrey Epstein files played a role in her wait to get seated.

"I really like this lady. She's going to be an excellent member of Congress," Speaker Johnson said after he swore Grijalva in. "We followed the custom of the House on the timetable and we've had a little, as we say in the deep South, some intense fellowship about that. But she's here now and I promised that we would have the oath administered before we began legislative business so she hasn't missed a vote."

Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D-N.M., said swearing in Grijalva during the shutdown is just one of the business items of the chamber that should have been done last month.

"For the last 54 days, the House has been completely closed and locked out, and there is all manner of legislative business that could have been going on," she told NPR. "People are angry about the lack of accountability."

Stansbury added: "We should have been here for the entire time."

Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., agreed with that.

"We were gone far too long," he told NPR. "I didn't want to go home in August [for recess]. So to be gone for those five or six weeks and then turn around and do it again in October was just – that's just more than Americans should have to put up with."

Womack, a longtime appropriator, said he has his eye on the end of January — when Congress has to finish the rest of its spending bills.

"We're going to be putting Congress on the clock again in another 78, 79 days," he said. "We're going to be right back where we were. I just hope we don't put America back through the same nut roll."

Transcript

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

The House of Representatives came back for one day this week after being gone for more than 50. During the government shutdown, the House was officially out of session. Some members did town halls back in their districts. Others came to the Capitol anyway. But as NPR's Barbara Sprunt reports, there was angst on all sides when everyone reassembled.

BARBARA SPRUNT, BYLINE: The House Rules Committee met earlier this week ahead of the full House coming back into session on Wednesday. And let's just say things were tense. Here's Jim McGovern, the top Democrat on the panel.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

JIM MCGOVERN: Long time no see. I hardly recognize you guys. Where the hell have you been?

SPRUNT: After repeated comments from Democrats about Republicans being on vacation during the shutdown, Chairwoman Virginia Foxx stepped in.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

VIRGINIA FOXX: I am sick and tired of hearing you all say we had an eight-week vacation.

YASSAMIN ANSARI: That's exactly what happened.

FOXX: I worked every day. I don't know about you.

ANSARI: I worked every single day as well.

FOXX: But I don't want to hear another soul say that.

ANSARI: We all worked every single...

SPRUNT: The House passed its version of a stopgap funding bill in mid-September. House Speaker Mike Johnson then sent lawmakers home. He was asked on the third day of the shutdown, why not stay?

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MIKE JOHNSON: My quick answer's very simple. The House did its job.

SPRUNT: Then he blamed Democratic leaders in the Senate for not doing theirs. Leadership on both sides of the aisle held press conferences almost every day of the shutdown, but there were no votes, no committee hearings. Wednesday was the first official day back in 54 days.

KEVIN KILEY: It's a lot more crowded here. You know, the halls have been pretty lonely.

SPRUNT: That's California Republican Kevin Kiley. He kept showing up to his Capitol office throughout the shutdown.

KILEY: To be honest with you, this has not been the finest hour for the United States Congress, having the House of Representatives cancel its sessions while so many people across the country were suffering.

SPRUNT: He said he used the time to work with a colleague on the other side of the aisle to address an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year. Those subsidies were central to the shutdown.

KILEY: That was, I guess, one advantage of being here is that we - I have had some constructive conversations like that. But of course, if the entire House was here, then we could have been having this sort of consensus-building process that you need to pass legislation like this.

SPRUNT: Fellow Republican Mark Alford of Missouri said the time back home was useful.

MARK ALFORD: Look, I've been here for three years. I got more done in my district than I think in the three years that I've been there. I've been able to visit farms. We went to businesses. We visited 14 of 18 rural hospitals in our district. And it gave us a real clear picture where America stands right now and what we can do to help.

SPRUNT: Meanwhile, Democrats are still fuming that the House was even sent home at all.

JULIE JOHNSON: This was a ridiculous thing.

SPRUNT: That's Julie Johnson, a freshman Democrat from Texas.

J JOHNSON: I think that the speaker really has exhibited some poor judgment, and it was disrespectful to the body. And then the speaker refusing to swear in a dully elected, that was poor form.

SPRUNT: She's referring to Arizona Democrat Adelita Grijalva, who won a special election in mid-September but wasn't sworn in until yesterday before any votes. The common refrain from Democrats, like New Mexico's Melanie Stansbury, is this.

MELANIE STANSBURY: The House has been completely closed and locked out, and there is all manner of legislative business that could have been going on, and we should have been here the entire time.

SPRUNT: Republican Steve Womack of Arkansas says he agrees with that.

STEVE WOMACK: Listen, I didn't want to go home in August. So to be gone for those five or six weeks and then turn around and do it again in October was just - that's just more than America should have to put up with.

SPRUNT: He's a senior appropriator, and he's now looking down the road at what lies ahead.

WOMACK: We're going to be putting Congress on the clock again in another 78, 79 days. We're going to be right back where we were. I just hope we don't put America back through the same nut roll.

SPRUNT: Funding for much of the government will run out again January 30.

Barbara Sprunt, NPR News, the Capital.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/g-s1-97700

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2025 GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN | UPDATED THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2025 • 2:00 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

The government shutdown is over, but not everything is back to normal

By Rachel Treisman

The longest government shutdown in U.S. history is officially over after President Trump signed a bill passed by Congress on Wednesday night.

The federal government is reopening. But after 43 days on pause, things may not return to business as usual right away. For instance, federal workers are still awaiting backpay and air travel disruptions are expected to linger.

And some impacts could continue much longer than six weeks, whether that's national parks trying to make up for lost visitor revenue or taxpayers waiting longer for refunds from a backlogged Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

There's also the looming threat of another potential shutdown in the not-too-distant future, since this bill only funds the government through Jan. 30.

Here's a look at where things stand for now.

Keep scrolling for updates, and jump by category here:

Federal workers | SNAP| Smithsonian | Air travel | National parks | Taxes | Economic data

Federal employees return to work, awaiting back pay

Roughly 1.4 million federal workers have gone without pay for six weeks. Roughly half of them were required to keep working without paychecks, while hundreds of thousands of others were furloughed.

Russ Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, told agency heads to direct furloughed employees to return to work Thursday.

"Agencies should take all necessary steps to ensure that offices reopen in a prompt and orderly manner" on Thursday, Vought wrote in a Wednesday memo.

The timing of backpay is a different question.

After the government shutdown ending in January 2019 — then the longest in history — Congress passed a law ensuring back pay for federal workers "at the earliest date possible after the lapse in appropriations ends, regardless of scheduled pay dates."

But Trump appeared to suggest otherwise in public comments last month, leaving many feds worried.

The bill that Congress passed to end the shutdown guarantees back pay. It also reverses several agencies' attempted staffing reductions during the shutdown, which were paused by a federal judge, and prevents additional layoffs of federal employees through January.

Shaun Southworth, a federal employment attorney, said in an Instagram video that the timing of backpay will vary by agency based on their payroll providers, but most employees should start seeing deposits within days.

"Many employees historically saw deposits within the first business days after reopening," he says of the last shutdown. "A minority may roll to the next cycle if the system needs extra processing."

SNAP is back

The bill Congress passed to reopen the government funds the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) through September 2026.

The program, which some 42 million Americans rely on for food assistance, has been the subject of much uncertainty — and an escalating legal battle — in recent weeks. The Trump administration said last month that it would suspend SNAP funding in November due to the shutdown, prompting a wide outcry and a series of legal challenges.

While the administration initially said it would comply with two rulings requiring it to provide at least partial funding for SNAP in November, it balked — and ultimately appealed to the Supreme Court — after one of those judges said it must fund the program fully for the month. The Supreme Court paused that order (and extended that pause again on Tuesday, with the end of the shutdown in sight).

At this point, beneficiaries in some states have gotten their full monthly allocations, while others have gotten partial payments or nothing at all. Reopening the government means restarting SNAP, but it's not clear how quickly full payments will resume, since that varies by state. And, as NPR has reported, many who rely on the program are worried that benefits could be cut again.

Smithsonian institutions will reopen on a rolling basis

The Smithsonian, which encompasses 21 museums and the National Zoo, says its reopening will be gradual.

Its website says the National Museum of American History, as well as the National Air and Space Museum and its Virginia annex, the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, will open their doors on Friday.

All other museums and the zoo — including its beloved live animal cams — will reopen to the public "on a rolling basis" by Monday.

Air travel won't bounce back overnight

The shutdown snarled air travel in a tangle that experts say is beyond a quick fix.

Escalating shortages of air traffic controllers — who have been required to work without pay — caused delays and disruptions at airports nationwide since early October. Then, last week, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered airlines to reduce air traffic at 40 of the country's busiest airports, starting by 4% and ramping up to 10% by this Friday.

The FAA announced Wednesday that it would freeze flight reductions at the current 6% level, citing a rapid improvement in controller staffing. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said air traffic controllers will get a lump sum payment equal to 70% of their back pay within 48 hours of the shutdown ending.

The agency says it will continue to assess "whether the system can gradually return to normal operations."

Airlines and aviation regulators have warned that flight disruptions are likely to continue once the government reopens. Airlines had to adjust their schedules to reduce flights, and those changes can take time to reverse.

"It's going to take a bit to unwind, and the responsibility is not going to fall completely on the air traffic control operation," former FAA administrator Randy Babbitt told NPR's All Things Considered on Tuesday. "A good deal of responsibility will be the carriers getting their schedules and the aircraft and personnel back in the right positions to resume normal flying."

Air travel experts have told NPR that even after the shutdown, lingering impacts could potentially complicate Thanksgiving travel — which is always a hectic time to fly.

National Parks start to "pick up the pieces"

Most national parks stayed at least partially open during the shutdown, but with significantly reduced staffing (since thousands of National Park Service employees were furloughed) and limited services like visitor centers and trash pickup.

The National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), a nonprofit that advocates for national parks, said in a statement that it could take months for returning staff to address the damage.

"For 43 days, many national parks were left open, vulnerable and unprotected," said Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs at NPCA. "The National Park Service, already pushed to its breaking point after losing 25% of permanent staff, is left to pick up the pieces."

National parks were already feeling the strain before the shutdown, forced by federal funding cuts to cancel ranger programs, close visitors centers and pause maintenance and research.

During the shutdown, parks were unable to collect millions of dollars in entrance and recreational fees, which Brengel says could delay construction projects and other visitor services. And nonprofits which diverted resources to help parks stay operational have depleted their budgets in the process, Brengel says, leaving them "unsure if they will ever fully recover those funds."

Congress' bill funds the National Park Service through January. But Brengel calls it "only a short-term reprieve," warning that another government shutdown could dampen the busy season by affecting the hiring of seasonal rangers for next spring and summer.

The IRS is looking ahead to tax filing season

The IRS furloughed nearly half of its approximately 74,000 workers and tried to lay off roughly 1,400 others — though those cuts were reversed as a result of the bill reopening the government.

The agency's operations were limited during the shutdown. It generally did not pay tax refunds during this period, scaled back its live telephone customer service supports, closed walk-in Taxpayer Assistance Centers and cancelled appointments related to cases with the Independent Office of Appeals and Taxpayer Advocate Service — which it says will be rescheduled once the government reopens.

Tax deadlines and laws remain in effect, and the IRS says it has continued critical operations related to next year's tax-filing season.

But some experts worry that the effects of the shutdown — on top of thousands of IRS job cuts enacted earlier this year — could make for a messy 2026 tax season.

In an October letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) urged the IRS to take steps like pausing notice and collection activities during the shutdown. It wrote that since taxpayers can only respond to those by mail, the understaffed agency may not see their letters in time to fix errors or address issues — and will have to deal with an unwieldy backlog when the government reopens.

"This burden has the real potential to delay the 2026 filing season due to the increased stresses to our entire tax system," the accountants wrote.

Such disruptions have happened before.

The 2018-2019 shutdown left the IRS with over 5 million pieces of unprocessed mail, 80,000 unaddressed responses to Fiscal Year 2018 Earned Income Tax Credit audits and 87,000 amended returns waiting to be processed, according to a report by the National Taxpayer Advocate (an independent agency within the IRS).

And years earlier, the 16-day government shutdown in October 2013 delayed billions of dollars of tax refunds and created a backlog of 1.2 million income and Social Security number verification requests, according to the Committee for a Responsible Budget.

Delayed economic reports may never be released

The shutdown could leave permanent gaps in economic data.

The Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics typically releases employment reports on the first Friday of each month, a practice that was paused in October and November. Even with the government reopening, their future is uncertain.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Wednesday that October's inflation and jobs reports will "likely never [be] released and all of that economic data released will be permanently impaired." She blamed Democrats for the shutdown, which she said "may have permanently damaged the federal statistical system."

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has not commented publicly on the status of the reports or updated its calendar of upcoming release dates. Economists expect the bureau to release its September jobs report (which was nearly ready when the government shut down on Oct. 1) first, and say it's an open question when — or whether — any October reports will be published.

Correction

Nov. 13th, 2025

An earlier version of this story featured a photo with incorrect caption information. The first photo was taken at the U.S. Capitol, not Reagan Washington National Airport.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5607812

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EDUCATION | THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2025 • 3:19 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Federal special education staff may get their jobs back. But for how long?

By Cory Turner

The deal Congress reached to re-open the federal government requires the Trump administration to reinstate federal workers who were fired in October, including those charged with overseeing the nation's special education laws. But it's not clear how long they'll be back.

As NPR has reported, the Office for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) inside the U.S. Department of Education is the central nervous system for programs that support students with disabilities. It not only offers guidance to families but also oversees state compliance with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

OSERS can't do its job without staff, and, according to a new Education Department filing, the office lost 121 of its 135 employees in the October reduction-in-force. That matters because, while Wednesday's funding agreement will return those workers to "employment status" as of Sept. 30, there appears to be little protecting them after Jan. 30, when that provision expires.

"We are concerned special education will cease to exist," says Jacqueline Rodriguez, CEO of the National Center for Learning Disabilities.

The Education Department did not answer specific questions from NPR about whether workers who were cut in October would be allowed to resume their work, as opposed to being put on administrative leave, or if the department would try to fire them again after the deal expires.

The department offered only this statement: "The Department has brought back staff that were impacted by the Schumer Shutdown. The Department will follow all applicable laws."

If OSERS stays a shadow of its former self, Rodriguez says, "the only conclusion that we can draw is that it is an intentional dismantling of the entire system of special education."

The Office for Civil Rights has also seen big cuts

Another Education Department office that supports students with disabilities was also decimated by the October cuts.

Families often turn to the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) when they fear their child has been illegally denied special education services. But the Education Department's recent court filing shows the extent of the administration's efforts to gut that office:

OCR lost 299 staffers after the March reduction-in-force but, because of a lawsuit, most (247) remain on temporary, paid administrative leave. Another 137 were cut in the October reduction-in-force, which has been paused by a federal judge. Under the new government funding agreement, those 137 staffers should be reinstated, at least until Jan. 30.

By the department's own numbers, that means just 62 staffers of OCR's current 446 employees have not received RIF notices. That's roughly 10% of the office's 600-plus headcount in January, when the second Trump administration began.

OCR and OSERS are both mandated by federal law.

"I've got to say, I'm just shocked that they can destroy an entire unit of an organization that's created by statute," said R. Shep Melnick, a professor of American politics at Boston College who has been writing about OCR for decades.

If the office is not returned to previous staffing levels, with at least enough attorneys to field and investigate individual discrimination complaints from families, Melnick says OCR "will have to reinvent itself. And I fear it's going to reinvent itself in a way that it will just be a political arm of the administration."

In spite of these staff cuts, the administration has aggressively used OCR to enforce its new interpretations of civil rights laws, going after school districts and colleges that continue to provide protections for transgender students or embrace diversity, equity and inclusion.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5608038

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GOATS AND SODA | THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2025 • 7:15 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

If you're going to be kind to another human, today is the day to do it!

By Kamala Thiagarajan

Editor's Note:

Hey readers, we think you're great!

We wanted to share that kind thought with you because today, November 13, is "World Kindness Day" — created back in 1998 by a consortium of kindhearted charities.

If you're going to celebrate, say organizers, you should do at least one intentional act of kindness. (I don't think it counts if you're kind to yourself, although honestly, it can't hurt!)

For us at Goats and Soda, in addition to sharing a kind thought with our devoted readers, we thought, this is a good opportunity to learn more about kindness — and to find out how acts of kindness can change lives. That's especially critical in a world where cruelty, war and bad news seem omnipresent.

Some hardhearted souls may even question whether small acts of kindness really matter. Spoiler alert: They do!

So … kindly stick with us as we explore … kindness.

Let's start with a simple yet profound story about a snack.

Back in 2004, Maymunah Yusuf Kadiri, a neuro-psychiatrist and mental health advocate in Nigeria, was a young doctor working in the emergency room at the Lagos State University Teaching hospital. One night sticks in her mind. It was chaos. There were accident victims everywhere. She recalls the blood, the cries and her own exhaustion.

"I hadn't eaten for over 12 hours, and my hands were shaking," says Kadiri, who was 28 at the time. "Then an elderly cleaner, one of those invisible heroes in hospitals, walked up to me with a small nylon bag." Inside was a biscuit and a sachet of water.

"Doctor," she said, "you need small strength to save people."

"It sounds simple, but I'll never forget it. That biscuit tasted like hope. Her kindness reminded me that healing isn't only about medicine, it's about humanity," says Kadiri. "As a psychiatrist, I've seen it over and over: People don't just heal in hospitals, they heal in human connections."

And while one isolated act of kindness may seem random, it can lead to much more.

Huguette Diakabana remembers when she had to drop out of school at age 10 — until a mysterious donor came to her rescue. Her family was planning to emigrate to the U.S. from Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) and couldn't afford school fees. They figured she'd make up the year later. She had a different idea: "I put on my previous year's uniform and sat outside under the street window of my would-be classroom." One day, the director invited her inside. Diakabana realized someone must have paid her school fees, but who?

Returning to the school years later, Diakabana discovered it was a school guard. She wanted to repay him. "He told me to help others when I could, so I launched a scholarship program," says Diakabana, who now lives in Switzerland and is co-founder of The Luminous Agency, which focuses on digital literacy.

Dr. Junaid Nabi, a physician-scientist who conducts research in health care technology at the RAND School in Washington, D.C. and is a senior fellow at the Aspen Institute, says he's come to realize that kindness isn't actually a trickle in the ocean. An act of kindness is more like dropping a stone that creates expanding ripples, he says.

"There are studies that illustrate how kindness spreads through social networks in measurable ways. When we are kind to someone, they don't just feel better — they become 25% more likely to help others."

One such investigation described how kindness can be contagious. It was sparked by reports of an outbreak of kindness on a cold December morning in 2012. A stranger picked up the tab for the coffee order of the next customer in the drive-through line at a Tim Hortons coffeehouse in Winnipeg, Canada. And that customer picked up the tab of the person behind him. In the end, 226 customers passed on this act of kindness.

The study authors, citing other examples of "pay it forward" kindness at fast food restaurants and their own experiments encouraging subjects to help others, write: "Why, in the absence of external sanctions and opportunities for reciprocation, do people help strangers? One possible explanation is that helping is driven by receiving or observing help. In other words, generosity towards strangers may be socially contagious."

Says Nabi: Your kindness influences a friend, who influences their friend, who influences their friend. "This creates what is often termed as 'social contagion.'"

It's like a positive feedback loop, Nabi says: Feeling cared for makes you want to care for others. The 2025 World Happiness Report surveyed people from 147 countries. Interviewees spoke a simple truth: Doing something kind with no motive for gain made them feel better.

Nature or nurture?

And where does kindness come from? Are you born with it? Or can you learn to be compassionate and empathetic?

Jeff R. Temple, a professor and psychologist with UTHealth Houston, says kindness is a central thread running through his studies on healthy relationships among adolescents and young adults.

"In our intervention work — including with the Fourth R program and other school-based curricula — we teach adolescents to practice perspective-taking, to express care even during disagreement and recognize the impact of their words and actions. These are essentially the behavioral expressions of kindness." Such kids are less likely to bully others because they know what healthy relationships are like, he says.

A ripple effect

And let's not forget that kindness can change not only the life of the recipient of the kind deed but of the kind person, says Nabi, who offers this anecdote.

In the 2013 Savar building collapse in Bangladesh, where 1,040 garment workers were crushed under concrete. Rescue workers managed to pull out 2,400 people from the rubble two weeks after the collapse. Nabi arrived at the disaster site as a Red Cross volunteer, expecting to gain experience in trauma care. Instead, he says, the experience changed his psyche, teaching him about the nature of true kindness.

"In the midst of chaos, with bodies awaiting identification, kindness came down to being present during others' darkest moments," says Nabi. "I performed CPR on workers I knew wouldn't survive. and when I couldn't save someone, I stayed by their side, holding their hand."

"Before Savar, I was mechanistic, rushing through clinical work like tasks," he recalls. "The image of workers who had embraced each other as concrete crushed them — that final act of human kindness in the face of death — shattered my callousness completely."

When he returned to the hospital, he listened to patients differently, giving them more of his time. He also urges doctors to volunteer for humanitarian causes to practice compassion.

"Kindness, I learned, is about showing up completely for another person's suffering," Navi reflects, "and letting that experience fundamentally change who you are."

So if you began reading this story with the thought that World Kindness Day is … a gimmick … it is a gimmick imbued with heart and hope.

It's a good reminder to practice kindness more, Dr. Kadiri says. "And here's the beautiful part: When someone receives kindness, they don't just feel better, they become better." They may be inspired to perform their own act of kindness. And that, she says, makes the world a kinder, better place too.

Your turn: Readers! Have you ever had a life-changing moment because of an act of kindness. Share your story with us by emailing goatsandsoda@npr.org and we may use it in a follow-up story on kindness.

Special thanks to the photojournalists of The Everyday Projects, who shared their beautiful images of kind moments for this story.

Kamala Thiagarajan is a freelance journalist based in Madurai, Southern India. She reports on global health, science and development and has been published in The New York Times, The British Medical Journal, the BBC, The Guardian and other outlets. You can find her on X @kamal_t

Full article: https://www.npr.org/g-s1-97432

GOATS AND SODA | WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2025 • 4:59 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

New malaria drug could be a life-saver as the standard drug shows signs of weakness

By Jonathan Lambert

At the turn of the millennium, a new class of drugs derived from ancient Chinese herbal medicine revolutionized malaria care. Artemisinin's, as they're called, are based on extracts from the sweet wormwood plant. They arrived just as the drugs used since the 1970s were becoming useless for many, as the parasite that causes malaria evolved resistance.

"The deaths we saw in the late 1990s, the early 2000s — like 2 million a year — that was a direct result of drug failure," says George Jagoe, executive vice president of access and product management at Medicines for Malaria Venture, a non-profit. "No one ever wants to be behind the 8-ball again."

Artemisinins have saved millions of lives since then and are now the foundation of malaria treatment worldwide. But there are worrying signs that these drugs are following in the footsteps of their predecessors. To prevent history from repeating itself, new drugs that target the malaria parasite differently are required, says Jagoe.

"I would call it being ready, having a fire extinguisher in the back that you're ready to use, but maybe not necessarily deploying, versus the house catches on fire and you've got nothing," says Jagoe.

After more than two decades, researchers are on the cusp of having that fire extinguisher.

A new drug, called GanLum, was more than 97% effective at treating malaria in clinical trials carried out across 12 African countries, researchers reported Wednesday at the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in Toronto. That's as good, if not better, than the current standard of treatment. If approved by regulators, it could be a powerful new tool against a disease that kills roughly half a million people each year.

"It's a big deal," says Kasturi Haldar, a biologist at the University of Notre Dame who has studied malaria for decades and was not involved in this study. "It's also pretty timely."

That's because of artemisinin resistance. First discovered in southeast Asia in the late 2000s, it's recently spread to the continent hardest hit by malaria. "Partial artemisinin resistance has been spreading quite aggressively across many parts of Africa," says David Fidock, a microbiologist at Columbia University who wasn't involved in the study. "We've been sounding the alarm that we must have new drugs to deploy, should resistance lead to treatment failure. [GanLum] will help stem that significantly."

GanLum stands for ganaplacide/lumefantrine, a combination of two drugs, one new and one old (most antimalarial treatments are combinations of drugs, to target the parasite at different stages of infection). The new one, ganaplacide, was discovered by scientists at Novartis after screening over 2.3 million molecules for antimalarial properties. It seems to work by disrupting the malaria parasites' ability to live inside human red blood cells.

In the lab, the researchers showed it could kill all known forms of the parasite, including those with mutations linked to artemisinin resistance. It also attacks the stage of the parasite that's responsible for transmission. "That is very desirable for a drug to have," says Haldar, since it can prevent the spread, in addition to just treating the patient.

In clinical trial settings, the drug performed well too.

The research team enrolled over 16,000 adults and children over 2 years old with malaria across a dozen countries in Africa. Half took GanLum over the course of three days and half got the current artemisinin-based standard of care. The team found both drugs were about equally effective, with GanLum coming out slightly on top. Both drugs had similar levels of side effects, including nausea and diarrhea. But the GanLum group did experience more vomiting.

The drug still needs to clear additional regulatory hurdles before it gets to patients. The team thinks that'll take about a year and a half. Even if it's approved and rolled out, GanLum likely won't be fully replacing artemisinin-based treatments anytime soon, since arteminisin-based treatments still work in many areas. "But at this point, it looks good enough that it could be used where there's a lack of responsiveness to the current [artemisinin-based] drugs," says Haldar.

Ultimately, that could prolong the lifespan of both drugs, and help countries avoid the kind of surge in deaths that's happened when resistance overwhelms existing tools.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/g-s1-97487

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SCIENCE | THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2025 • 5:24 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

This week in science: A Saturn moon's ocean, chameleon eyes and energy used for AI

By Emily Kwong, Regina G. Barber

Heard on All Things Considered

Transcript

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

Time now for our science news roundup from Short Wave, NPR's science podcast. And we have the show's two hosts here, Regina Barber and Emily Kwong. Hello.

REGINA BARBER, BYLINE: Hey.

EMILY KWONG, BYLINE: Hi, Scott.

DETROW: You have, as you do...

KWONG: Yeah.

DETROW: ...Brought us three stories from the world of science. What are they?

KWONG: A map of the AI energy crisis.

BARBER: And good news for an ocean moon of Saturn.

KWONG: And a new discovery about chameleons.

DETROW: Let's - since it seems the least joyous, let's start with AI computing.

(LAUGHTER)

KWONG: True.

DETROW: We talk a lot about AI these days, and there's a lot of concern about the power it's sucking up.

KWONG: Yeah. It - truly. A lot of AI computing relies on data centers. Data centers are these big buildings which gobble up gigawatts of energy, sometimes millions of gallons of water for cooling. And as tech companies try to make good on AI's potential, there is an energy crisis in the making.

DETROW: How so?

BARBER: Well, because the majority of these data centers are powered by fossil fuels. Tianqi Xiao is a Ph.D. candidate at Cornell University, and he says that if the tech industry and policymakers are not careful, the boom in AI will jeopardize our climate progress.

TIANQI XIAO: The monitoring will be much important in the next few years because before we know the whole picture, and it may already do something very bad for our environment.

KWONG: So this week, in the journal Nature Sustainability, Tianqi's team at Cornell published a state-by-state portrait of the environmental impact of AI. And this map took three years to make.

DETROW: Three years? What did it tell us? Was it worth the wait?

KWONG: Well, using data analytics and - ironically - some AI...

BARBER: (Laughter).

KWONG: ...The team determined that by 2030, at the rate of AI growth in the U.S. would put an additional 24- to 44 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And the team said it could use as much water as 6- to 10 million Americans do every year. All of this, the paper concludes, would put the tech industry's climate goals out of reach.

DETROW: Can you remind me what those initial goals were, or are?

BARBER: Yeah. So Google, Microsoft and Meta have all pledged to reach net-zero carbon emissions and to be water positive by 2030. Amazon has set their net-zero carbon deadline for 2040. But according to this paper, AI is putting all of those climate goals in peril. We reached out to these companies. Google didn't reply, and the others declined to comment.

DETROW: I mean, I'm hearing this and I'm feeling sad and discouraged.

BARBER: Yeah, me too.

(LAUGHTER)

KWONG: No. Never.

DETROW: Is that the right feeling?

KWONG: Never despair, Scott, ever, because a big part of this study is about solutions. The biggest takeaway is location. Study author Fengqi You says where you build a data center matters.

FENGQI YOU: If we build AI in the right place, on the clean power grid and with efficient cooling technology, it could really grow without blowing past climate and water limits.

KWONG: Fengqi wants data centers built in places with low water stress, that are already transitioning to clean energy. So spots in the Midwest and Wind Belt states like Texas, Montana, Nebraska and South Dakota are good candidates. And Big Tech has been scouting future data centers in some of these states.

DETROW: This still makes me anxious and worried.

BARBER: (Laughter) Yeah.

DETROW: And I think it's time to change the topic to an ocean moon...

KWONG: Yeah.

DETROW: ...Which I would much rather talk about (laughter).

BARBER: Yeah.

KWONG: What a pivot.

BARBER: Well, me too. Me too, Scott.

KWONG: Off Earth.

BARBER: I know you love space.

DETROW: I do.

BARBER: And you might remember that Saturn has 274 confirmed moons, right?

DETROW: Confirmed moons.

BARBER: Yeah. And one of those moons is Enceladus, and it's really intriguing to scientists looking for life elsewhere in the solar system because it has an ocean covering its entire surface that's locked under a thick layer of ice. And scientists say it could be a good potential spot for life.

GEORGINA MILES: It looks like all the right ingredients are there for it. All it needs is time.

BARBER: That's Georgina Miles with the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado. And the ingredients for life she's talking about are liquid water, chemicals like hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and carbon.

KWONG: And in a new paper in the journal Science Advances, she and her colleagues write about another important ingredient - a heating source.

DETROW: Which feels pretty important for life, huh?

KWONG: Yeah - turns out - because if the temperatures in the ocean fluctuate too much - are hot or too cold - that's not good for life. You want a stable heat-flow process. And overall, this study found that the heat flow seems to be pretty consistent on Enceladus.

BARBER: And that means that the ocean on Enceladus is very stable. It is now and probably has been for most of the moon's existence.

DETROW: Which I assume is another good ingredient for what we're talking about here.

KWONG: Yeah. It's promising because life takes a really long time to begin and develop. Here's Carly Howett, another author of the study and fellow planetary scientist.

CARLY HOWETT: We know that evolution is a slow process, but we're hopeful if it started on Enceladus, there might be something for us to see today.

DETROW: Something for us to see today - does that mean we're going there? Are we sending robots there? What's the situation?

KWONG: Not NASA, but...

DETROW: OK.

KWONG: ...The European Space Agency...

DETROW: Oh.

KWONG: ...May. Carly and Georgina are based in the U.K., and the European Space Agency is proposing a mission to Enceladus in the 2040s.

BARBER: But there is a NASA mission going to another promising moon of Saturn - Titan. It's set to launch in 2028, which is really soon. This moon has mountains of ice and methane lakes. The lander on this mission, Dragonfly, will do close-up measurements of Titan's surface.

DETROW: OK. That's interesting.

KWONG: Yeah.

DETROW: Can we also talk about chameleons? And can I make a request?

BARBER: Yeah.

DETROW: My 3-year-old daughter has recently started calling chameleons colorful lizards.

KWONG: They are.

BARBER: That's true.

DETROW: OK.

KWONG: They're part of a clade called Old World lizards.

BARBER: Yeah.

KWONG: And they are incredibly colorful and funky.

BARBER: Yeah. And, Scott, let me also start with this, like, stone-cold - like, this universal truth about these colorful lizards, these chameleons.

ED STANLEY: Every aspect of them is weird.

(LAUGHTER)

BARBER: This is Ed Stanley, an evolutionary biologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

STANLEY: They have fused fingers for grasping onto branches. They have all the color-change stuff. They have a ballistic tongue. Their body shape is absolutely bizarre, right?

BARBER: (Laughter).

STANLEY: Most lizards are short and wide.

DETROW: Yeah.

STANLEY: These ones are incredibly thin and tall.

KWONG: And there's another trait to add to the list. They've got really weird optic nerves, OK? So optic nerves - that's the bundle of nerve fibers that send information between the eyes and the brain in lizards - they're more straight, but in chameleons, those optic nerves are coiled.

DETROW: In Short Wave and ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, we love weirdos.

BARBER: Yeah.

DETROW: It's very true.

KWONG: Three of them are in this room.

DETROW: (Laughter).

BARBER: Yes (laughter).

DETROW: But in terms of our chameleon friends, why does all this weirdness matter?

BARBER: OK, so researchers suspect it could help chameleons move their eyes in those, like, strange, twisty ways. I'm sure you've seen this before, Scott, like, when one eye of a chameleon is, like, moving independently from the other.

DETROW: Oh, yeah.

BARBER: Like, maybe one is looking at an insect for lunch, and the other one's looking at another chameleon.

JUAN DAZA: Chameleons can even look backwards, so it's really bizarre for an animal.

DETROW: What?

KWONG: Right. OK, this is Juan Daza. He's one of the study authors. And he compared the coils of their optic nerve to those old landline telephone cords.

DETROW: Oh.

DAZA: We discovered at some point that if you made this cord twisted, you can have more range of movement.

KWONG: Like, remember the days when the phone would be in the kitchen and you could walk into the living room...

DETROW: So your mom couldn't hear you.

KWONG: ...'Cause the coil extended?

BARBER: (Laughter).

KWONG: Yeah, you didn't want that. Maybe the coil in the optic nerves of chameleons is what allows their eyes to go all catawampus like that.

DETROW: I mean, I'm kind of surprised this is all new information. We've all been loving chameleons for a long time.

KWONG: Yeah.

BARBER: Yeah. And scientists have dissected them. They've looked at chameleons. But that's probably why we didn't know this. So, like, dissections can damage the optic nerve. Researchers in this study used CT scans, which allowed them to get a 3D view of the chameleons' internal structures without destroying the optic nerve. They wrote about it this week in the journal Scientific Reports.

DETROW: That is Regina Barber and Emily Kwong, two weirdos...

BARBER: (Laughter).

KWONG: Proud.

DETROW: ...Who host NPR's science podcast...

KWONG: Yep.

DETROW: ...Short Wave. You can follow it on the NPR app or on your podcast platform of choice. Thank you to you both.

BARBER: Thank you.

KWONG: Bye, Scott.

DETROW: And a note that Google, Microsoft and Amazon are financial supporters of NPR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5601812

CLIMATE RISK HITS HOME | THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2025 • 5:30 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Why home insurance is unaffordable, even in places without wildfires or hurricanes

By Rebecca Hersher

Heard on Morning Edition

The storm blew into Cozad, Neb., in the wee hours of Saturday, June 29, 2024. The wind felt like a hurricane. The hail was the size of softballs.

"I was in the window, I was crying," remembers Soledad Avalos, who has lived with her husband in their home in Cozad for 35 years. "Seeing all the damage [to] the cars and the house."

When the sun came up, the extent of the damage became clear. Cozad is a small town of about 4,000 people, surrounded by corn fields. Crops were flattened. Virtually every vehicle parked outside that night had a broken windshield. Nearly every roof in town was leaking, or worse. Siding was missing, paint had been stripped away. The storm came from the northwest, and so nearly every northwest-facing window was cracked. Both the hospital and the school were in disrepair.

"Those softball-sized hail stones just punched a hole through the roof membrane, and water was just pouring through the ceiling like a waterfall, or a shower," says Robert Dyer, the CEO of the Cozad Community Health System, which runs Cozad Community Hospital, the only hospital in town. "Tiles were coming down, hunks of old plaster. It was just pretty devastating." The hospital's emergency department had to shut down for several hours, and the building is still being repaired more than a year later.

Hailstorms like the one that hit Cozad don't often make national headlines, because they are usually hyper-local events that hit just one town, or one neighborhood in a larger city. Most hailstorms don't cause enough damage to trigger federal disaster declarations, or make it onto official annual lists of major weather disasters. And they are generally less deadly than flash floods, hurricanes and wildfires.

But extremely costly hailstorms are getting more likely in the United States, researchers warn. Across the central and eastern U.S., the weather conditions that can produce hail that's at least the size of a pool ball have gotten more common, according to Deborah Bathke, Nebraska's state climatologist. And the Great Plains are expected to have more frequent hail as the planet warms up.

That risk is driving up the cost of home insurance in the middle of the country, saddling average Americans with huge bills. Areas with the most hail risk are seeing some of the fastest growing home insurance prices in the U.S., according to two landmark federal reports released in the last year.

"In the Midwest, you've seen a surprising increase in losses," says Robert Gordon, a senior vice president at the American Property Casualty Insurance Association, the largest property insurance trade group. "It's particularly the hail, the wind. A lot of damage to roofs."

That escalating damage is a reminder that, as climate change drives more extreme weather, geography is no longer a guarantee of protection from skyrocketing insurance rates.

Home insurance costs are skyrocketing in the middle of the U.S.

The central United States is home to the worst hail risk on the planet.

"North America is the hail continent," explains Scott St. George, a climate scientist and the head of weather and climate research at WTW, an international risk analysis company. And he says hail is different from other types of severe weather because it does a lot of property damage without causing many fatalities.

"It basically damages anything that's outside. And we've got a lot of stuff in the way," according to St. George. "There are more houses insured, more expensive cars. Roofs, siding, car windows and exteriors."

That has led to enormous bills for property insurance companies. "You've seen some really big losses coming out of hail, mostly in the U.S." says St. George.

Last summer's hailstorm in Cozad caused an estimated $100 million in property damage, according to local insurance agent Brian Messersmith – an enormous sum for a town of just 4,000 people.

And, in 2024, hailstorms caused an estimated $160 billion in damage to homes nationwide, according to the Insurance Information Institute, an industry-run think tank. That figure doesn't even include storms that produced hail less than 2 inches in diameter, which can still cause widespread damage.

With losses mounting, insurance companies have raised prices in recent years. Nationwide, the cost of insurance rose about 8% faster than inflation between 2018 and 2022, according to a major report published by the Treasury Department in January.

The report found that the average price of property insurance in the Great Plains was significantly higher than the national average, with consumers in the Northern Plains paying about 20% more than the national average, and consumers in the Southern Plains paying more than 45% more. In Nebraska, the average cost of homeowners insurance this year is nearly $6,400, according to Bankrate. That's the highest in the country, and almost $4,000 above the national average.

In September, the Treasury report was removed from the department's website by the Trump administration. The Treasury Department did not respond to questions from NPR about why it was removed.

Hail risk is only one of many reasons that insurance is more expensive. The higher cost of labor, and of construction materials are also driving up insurance prices, says St. George.

"Insurance is very impacted by inflation," says Robert Gordon of the American Property and Casualty Insurance Association. "So if inflation suddenly spikes, then insurance losses go up." And the cost of building materials has increased even more than other goods in recent years, he points out.

Insurance companies are bringing in profits. Small towns are struggling

Rising prices for homeowners appear to be translating into profits for the industry. After losing more than $10 billion in 2023, the industry saw $26 billion in profits in 2024, according to credit agency AM Best.

Insurers say that's largely due to the severity of disasters in a given year. "It can be a dramatic swing because some years you have huge catastrophes," says Gordon. When insurers raise prices, they are simply passing along the enormous costs of rebuilding from major disasters, he says.

But high prices are hitting many homeowners hard, particularly in places with historically low cost-of-living, like Nebraska.

"Insurance in our state really has skyrocketed the past several years," says Josh Tapio, an insurance broker at All Lines Insurance in Omaha, Neb.

A few years ago, an average homeowner would pay about $1,500 per year to insure their $300,000 home, Tapio says. Now, it costs between $3,000 to $4,500, a two or even threefold increase.

"There's a lot of sticker shock when somebody opens their renewal bill and they see that it's double from what they paid last year," Tapio says. His office has never been busier, as people shop around for a policy they can afford.

The high cost of insurance can make property ownership untenable. Before the storm, longtime Cozad resident Jennifer McKeone owned two rental houses in town. The hail caused extensive damage to both, and her insurance company refused to keep insuring them.

"I scrambled to find insurance, and the only insurance I could find was going to raise the rent to the point where I didn't think the people who lived in the houses could afford it," McKeone says. She ended up selling the homes, because neither she nor her tenants could afford the insurance costs.

Seniors are hit particularly hard by rising insurance costs

In the year and a half since the storm hit Cozad, most of the broken windows have been replaced, and most of the leaking roofs have been repaired. "The town is doing well," says McKeone, who runs the Cozad Development Corporation, a local group that builds housing in town and works with businesses.

But under the surface, McKeone says, many are still trying to finish repairs to their homes. Seniors have been hit particularly hard, she says. Many older residents live on a fixed income from a pension or social security payments, and can't afford drastically higher bills.

Baltazar and Soledad Avalos, whose home was severely damaged in the storm, have experienced insurance problems firsthand. The home that they've lived in for 35 years had an insurance policy, but that policy didn't cover the full cost of all the repairs to the roof, windows and siding. Baltazar is still out on a ladder most days, fixing damage at age 72.

On top of that, the cost of their insurance has gone up by about 10%, which is significant for a retirement-age couple. Baltazar is retired, Soledad is still working.

Insurance is more expensive, and it covers less

One of the biggest complaints among Cozad residents is that, even as they shell out more for property insurance, that insurance is covering less.

Many people in town now have policies with higher deductibles, meaning that they need to pay thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars out of their own pockets before the insurance kicks in. And many new policies also don't cover the full cost of replacing a damaged roof, which is often the most expensive repair after a hailstorm.

Megan Fales has worked as an insurance agent in Cozad for more than a decade, and handles hundreds of home insurance policies in town. "A lot of people have just gotten to the point where, like 'Let's just take a higher deductible,'" she says, because it costs less each month, even though they agree to pay more for repairs if there's a future storm. She says many homeowners in the area hope to save money by doing repairs themselves, instead of relying on insurance to pay.

Businesses in town are also paying more money for less coverage. After the storm destroyed the roof of the local hospital, the insurance company refused to renew the policy. The only policies available are more expensive, and also have a much higher deductible for the roof. That means the hospital must pay more each month for insurance, and also must keep more cash on hand in case there's another storm.

In an effort to avoid catastrophic damage in future storms, the hospital's governing board chose to upgrade the building. Instead of simply replacing the damaged roof, they are investing in roof materials that can withstand high winds and small hail.

That choice saved them money on their monthly insurance premium, Dyer says. But even with those savings, they are paying more money for less coverage, compared to two years ago.

"It's to a point of unsustainability," says Dyer. "If we got hit by another storm right now, it would drain all our cash."

NPR's Robert Benincasa contributed to this story.

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Delegates from around the world, meeting at the annual United Nations climate conference, are talking about home insurance. Insurance is getting very expensive in large part because of extreme weather. In the U.S., insurance is especially high in coastal states with intense hurricanes and wildfires, and there is another hot spot at the very heart of the country. NPR's Rebecca Hersher takes us there.

REBECCA HERSHER, BYLINE: It's been nearly 18 months since a hailstorm damaged the only hospital in Cozad, Nebraska. Robert Dyer, the CEO of Cozad's Community Health System, walked me through the construction zone, where ceilings are still being repaired.

ROBERT DYER: Softball-sized hailstones just punched a hole through the roof membrane.

HERSHER: Water came pouring through those holes, he says.

DYER: Tiles were coming down, hunks of old plaster. It was just pretty devastating.

HERSHER: And it wasn't just the hospital that got hit hard. Robyn Geiser is the housing director for the local Cozad Development Corporation.

ROBYN GEISER: It impacted houses, cars, businesses. If it was in the open, it was impacted.

HERSHER: She says virtually every car in town had a cracked windshield.

GEISER: Houses that - it shredded the vinyl siding.

HERSHER: Even now, some houses in town look like they were sprayed with bullets. Double-paned windows have spidery patterns where one pane was shattered by the hailstones. One local insurance agent estimated the storm did $100 million in damage in a town of just 4,000 people, which means there were a lot of insurance claims. Massive insurance payments for hail are getting more common, says Scott St. George, a climate scientist at Willis Towers Watson, an international risk analysis company.

SCOTT ST GEORGE: You've seen some big losses coming out of hail, mostly in the U.S.

HERSHER: He says the main reason is that there's more and more stuff in hail-prone parts of the country.

ST GEORGE: Roofs, siding, car windows and exteriors. You know, basically anything that's outside that's in the path of a hailstorm that's insured is very vulnerable to a lot of expensive repairs.

HERSHER: In 2024, hailstorms caused an estimated $160 billion in insured damage to homes in the U.S., according to the Insurance Information Institute, an industry-run think tank. Insurers have responded by raising the price of insurance in the middle of the country, where damaging hail is most common. More expensive building materials and labor have also driven up prices nationwide. The upshot is that the Great Plains now have some of the most expensive home insurance in the country, according to two recent federal reports, which means average homeowners there are struggling with huge bills.

JOSH TAPIO: There's a lot of sticker shock when somebody opens their renewal bill from their company and they see that it's doubled from what they paid last year.

HERSHER: Josh Tapio is an insurance agent in Omaha.

TAPIO: It's just becoming unaffordable in our state, is the new reality.

HERSHER: Tapio says he doesn't expect insurance prices to go down in the future. Insurance premiums have increased 40% nationwide in the last six years, according to Lending Tree, and the weather is only getting worse. The risk of hail in the central U.S. is increasing as the planet gets even warmer, which means this is just the beginning of the insurance affordability crisis in places like Cozad, Nebraska. The hospital in Cozad is dealing with the new reality head-on. CEO Robert Dyer says they're paying a lot more for insurance these days and getting a lot less coverage, which is frustrating, but also increasingly common for both businesses and homeowners. Dyer is proud of how the hospital is dealing with the financial stress of rising insurance costs and more hail risk. He brings me into the new front lobby of the hospital, where workers are sanding drywall and installing new wiring.

DYER: We decided to try to turn lemons into lemonade.

HERSHER: There's a brand-new roof above our heads. And that roof has something called hail board in it, a hard layer that can withstand big balls of ice. The hail board means the roof costs more, says Dyer, but he's hoping the investment is worth it.

What would happen if...

DYER: Another one.

HERSHER: ...Another hailstorm like this happened next year?

DYER: Well, I would hope, with the mitigation that we put in place, we wouldn't have catastrophic failure on our roof.

HERSHER: The repairs would probably drain the hospital's cash, he says. It wouldn't be good, but it wouldn't shut the whole place down.

Rebecca Hersher, NPR News.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5535565

SPACE | WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2025 • 4:44 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

PBS documentary looks at 25 years of the challenges of surviving in space on the ISS

By Jeanette Woods, Alejandra Marquez Janse, Scott Detrow

Heard on All Things Considered

Transcript

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

The International Space Station is turning 25 this month. Twenty-five years of people from all over the world living together and working together in space. At the same time, it is starting to wrap up its mission in space. The space station is set to be decommissioned in 2030. A new PBS documentary tells the story of what it took to build the station and some of the dangerous experiences astronauts had to endure on board. We're going to talk about that now with executive producer Tom Adams, as well as astronaut Wendy Lawrence. Welcome, both of you.

WENDY LAWRENCE: Thank you.

TOM ADAMS: Hello.

DETROW: Tom, I want to start with you 'cause it's interesting, I feel like a lot of people interact with the space station by watching the various livestreams of it, you know, the view from the space station. And it can be a very peaceful experience to watch that. But the reality that you really lean into in this documentary is that it's not a particularly peaceful place to live and work. It is incredibly dangerous to be orbiting the Earth, and there's constantly one problem or another with no safety net.

ADAMS: I think that's the point. I mean, it looks serene up there. It looks like a place you would love to spend time - and I'm sure the astronauts do - but as one of our contributors says, everything up there is trying to kill you. And if that's your starting point, then to have created this extraordinary laboratory that is circling the Earth to conduct the most extraordinary science in, it's a story and a half. I mean, it's incredible that that structure was built in those kind of conditions.

DETROW: Wendy, how often did you actively think about it that way, that everything up there is trying to kill us? I mean, is that something you just kind of work to problem-solve, or is that in the back of your head as you hear a creak or a groan or whatever on the space station, day to day?

LAWRENCE: I didn't have an opportunity to do a long-duration mission. My mission on the shuttle was for a short period - about eight days. And honestly, you're so busy, day in and day out, trying to accomplish everything that you've been scheduled to do that day that there's not a lot of time to reflect. But I do have to say that as we were conducting our space walks - I was inside flying the International Space Station robotic arm - it was a little disconcerting to hear my fellow astronauts out in their suits clunking their boots along on the outside of the NASA laboratory module.

DETROW: (Laughter).

LAWRENCE: That was not a noise I expected to hear, and it does make you pause and think about the fact that, yes, you're in a very unforgiving environment, and you always have to respect the laws of physics and recognize that the laws of physics will always win. So from an engineering perspective, you have to acknowledge that and then come up with a design that can be robust enough to handle that very extreme environment.

DETROW: I want to talk about one moment in Part 1 of the documentary that, Wendy, you played a role in a pretty tense situation where the space shuttle Discovery had to be inspected because there were concerns that the heat shield had been damaged, and that was top of mind to everybody because this was the first mission after the Columbia disaster and safety was paramount. First, Tom, I want to talk to you. Why did you focus in on that? There's 25 years of different missions to focus on. Why was this one of the moments that you really wanted to zoom in on and fully understand?

ADAMS: I think there are these moments that required calm thinking and scientific approaches that, in a way, exemplified what the people involved in the space missions were doing. They didn't have everything to hand. They were isolated. They were up in space. Yes, they had communications to Earth and they had people on the ground helping them think through, but they had to make the best with what they had. And it seemed like this event was a perfect example of that, that as Wendy says, a part of the space shuttle that wasn't meant to be looked at had to be looked at. And by doing a 360, but also by getting someone on a robotic arm and putting them where someone had never been before, just showed what was possible with, as I say, calm thinking but having a job to do and needing to do it well.

DETROW: Wendy, what do you remember about that experience? You're guiding this arm, trying to get a fellow astronaut basically under - like changing the oil almost of a space shuttle, except it's a space shuttle and you're in space.

LAWRENCE: (Laughter) You know, you have kind of a split personality at that moment. One, you're very focused on the task that you have to do, which in my case was fly Steve Robinson very close to the thermal protection system tiles on the underside of the orbiter so he could pull out two things that we call gap fillers. But then kind of the little kid side of you goes, oh, my gosh, these are incredible views. We've never seen imagery like this before. Nobody's ever been here before, and we're getting to do this. This is so cool. But then you're very focused. It's, OK, Steve, I'll take you 6 inches to the right, OK? Motion starting, motion stopped. So that dual personality to me was always very interesting.

But to Tom's point, this really is a great tribute to the team on the ground that supports a crew during their mission. They're the people that put together the plan that made it very easy for the crew to carry out this activity. So to me, they're the true heroes of the story - you know, unsung, unfortunately - but really the true heroes behind this.

DETROW: Yeah. I mean, there's a lot to talk about when it comes to the International Space Station. There's the technological marvels. And I think there's also, like, the global political marvel of it. I interviewed a former NASA administrator, Bill Nelson, a couple years ago, and he made the point that, you know, U.S.-Russia relations are at their lowest point they've been since the Cold War. And he said the U.S. and Russia never stopped working together on the space station. I mean, how - Wendy, what was your point of view on that collaboration and how it worked moment to moment in a space station and just how remarkable that is and was?

LAWRENCE: Well, I have to back up. Back in the mid-'90s, we had our doubts about whether or not we could make this partnership be successful. But it was really the astronauts and cosmonauts - many of whom served in the militaries for their countries, who had actually trained to go to war against one another - we realize that we had the same job. We didn't speak the same language, but we had a common background, and we use that as kind of the glue to hold the program together and the foundation upon which to build the program.

And I say this often, and I'm very sincere in these comments, I think historians will look at the International Space Station program and say, yeah, some really fascinating science was being conducted on board. But the most significant contribution was that when we humans choose to do this, we truly can take those proverbial swords and beat them into plowshares. We can do some remarkable things together for all of mankind, for the benefit of humankind.

DETROW: That was astronaut Wendy Lawrence, as well as Tom Adams, the executive producer of the new PBS documentary, "Operation Space Station." Thanks to you both.

LAWRENCE: Thank you, Scott.

ADAMS: Thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5560997

Education

- Are college students getting too many A's?: 2025 Nov 13

- For students who rely on SNAP, school food pantries offer some relief: 2025 Nov 12

EDUCATION | THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2025 • 5:23 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Are college students getting too many A's?

By Kai McNamee, John Ketchum

Heard on All Things Considered

Transcript

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

Harvard University officials recently raised the alarm on grade inflation. A report last month found that more than half of all grades awarded to students were A's. That number has increased by 25% over the past two decades. Some say grades are creeping upwards because students have gotten soft and the standards for academic excellence are lower than they've ever been before. Well, Ian Bogost is a professor at Washington University in St. Louis and a contributing writer at The Atlantic, and he says the issue is a whole lot more complicated than simply students having thin skin. Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.

IAN BOGOST: Thank you so much for having me.

CHANG: So can we get into why grades are going up and up and up, starting with the institutional factors that you discuss in your article? Like, why do universities feel incentivized to give students higher and higher grades?

BOGOST: So one reason, especially at schools like Harvard or at WashU, where I teach, is the students have gotten a lot better. It's really hard to get into Harvard. And if it's harder to get in, that means the students are better. Maybe they deserve A's more. That's one reason. Another reason is that the work has changed. We've tried to modernize how the curriculum works, and, you know, assignments are sometimes smaller. Maybe you're doing projects and things that are not different from exams or papers or that sort of thing. There's conditions of academic labor. About three-quarters of faculty all across the country are nontenured, and their employment may be based in part on the evaluations that students give them. So there's an incentive for them to give higher grades 'cause students love getting higher grades.

CHANG: A little bit of old-fashioned bribery?

BOGOST: That's right. There's issues around, you know, anxiety and mental health concerns and universities' desires to address those. And certainly, the performance that - the pressure that students are under is very high. The cost of college has been rising, and that has turned students more into customers, and they say, well, I would like to perform well.

CHANG: Yeah, explain that because you argue that one factor that's playing into all of this is this broader trend of students transitioning from scholars into customers, as you put it...

BOGOST: Yeah.

CHANG: ...At universities. Talk more about that.

BOGOST: Yeah. It started with a desire to make sure that if you came to college and you were spending money, that you were going to graduate, you were going to get something out of the experience. And a whole regime that's sometimes called student success was launched. But as we started competing more and more for students on the intangibles - you know, the nice dorms and the pretty campuses and the facilities and all the rest - the student success expanded and, you know, it started to include wellness and satisfaction and other aspects of kind of lifestyle marketing, almost.

And all of that means that when you're at college and you're spending, you know, a hundred thousand dollars a year in some cases, that it's impossible for the situation not to become one that's more customer-like. And faculty have - they've responded. You can't help but think, well, they're paying a lot of money for this, and, you know, I want to grade them hard, or at least fairly, but you also understand that they believe that they're getting something back.

CHANG: Well, let me ask you about your personal experience as a professor. You have taught in the humanities, you have taught in computer science. So you have...

BOGOST: That's right.

CHANG: ...This large range of student-professor relationship experience. And I'm curious what you've noticed in terms of have you seen students' attitudes towards grades shift over the years, over your own academic career?

BOGOST: Right. I've been teaching for more than 20 years now, and I think the biggest general shift I have seen across all of the fields in which I teach is that the students want to know exactly what they need to do to get an A.

CHANG: How will you evaluate me, you know?

BOGOST: That's right.

CHANG: Yeah.

BOGOST: That's right.

CHANG: I mean, I relate to that.

BOGOST: And that's a fair question.

CHANG: Yeah.

BOGOST: It's a fair question, yeah. The problem is that part of the assessment of a student is making them come to the table and figure out what it is that we're asking for. So when I say, I want you to do this assignment, if I have to tell them exactly what to do to perform, then they're missing the opportunity to complete the assignment in the way that I've designed it. I want them to think about the question or the project or the written assignment or even the coding project that I've given them and bring something to the table from their own heads and their own experience.

CHANG: So is grade inflation something that should be resolved and done away with? What do you think?

BOGOST: I think it's more like a symptom of a bigger problem. You know, when the grades are going up, but the level of performance or mastery that the grade is meant to measure is not going up, that does seem like a problem that we should address, but you have to fix all these other conditions that are at work...

CHANG: Yeah.

BOGOST: ...And some of them are really complicated. You know, one that I talk about in this Atlantic piece is the accreditation system. The way that we measure ourselves in order to be able to grant degrees by these regulating organizations, that's also impacted how we grade. You can't, like, unwind that stuff just by giving more B's or something like that.

CHANG: Right.

BOGOST: You have to solve those problems at the place that they happen.

CHANG: So we just kind of throw up our hands and go, oh, well...

BOGOST: No, I mean, we...

CHANG: ...Eighty percent of people are going to get A's now next year (laughter)?

BOGOST: Right, right. I don't think that that's the answer either, but I think the first step toward an answer is recognizing that this sort of idea that either the students are lazy or the professors are soft, that that's - and it's just not true. That's not what's really...

CHANG: Yeah.

BOGOST: ...Happening.

CHANG: Ian Bogost, professor at Washington University in St. Louis, thank you very much for joining us today.

BOGOST: Oh, thank you so much.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5604885

EDUCATION | WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2025 • 4:45 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

For students who rely on SNAP, school food pantries offer some relief

By Jillian Forstadt

Heard on All Things Considered

Transcript

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

The Trump administration is appealing a court order to fully fund the SNAP program. Some states paid into it themselves, but the administration says that they need to take the money back. Food banks are trying to help, including some at schools. Jillian Forstadt of member station WESA visited one in Pittsburgh.

JILLIAN FORSTADT, BYLINE: At the end of each school week, students pack the pantry at Brashear High School. Every surface in the room is covered with fresh produce, dairy, frozen meat, even hygiene products. It's a big help for students like Ryan (ph), who says his family relies on the benefits they receive through SNAP - benefits that were disrupted by the government shutdown.

RYAN: The economy's a little bit rough, so my mom said try and get some food - help out the family. So that's what I'm doing today.

FORSTADT: Friday was the junior's second time inside the food pantry. We aren't using full names because the students in this story are minors, and we're asking them and their families to discuss their finances. Ryan is here picking up supplies for meals he plans to cook for his family.

RYAN: Canned stuff - it's all right, but mainly, like, the ingredients from the fruits and vegetable section - make some nice dinners for them.

FORSTADT: Pennsylvania was among the states that started to issue full SNAP benefits on Friday after a court order. Ryan's family received their full benefits, but the Trump administration has called those payments, quote, "unauthorized." Given the uncertainty, Ryan's mom, Roberta (ph), told NPR she's afraid to spend the money. She says the food pantry at her son's high school has been a godsend.

CHRISTINE WOLSKI: We got to keep going. We don't have a lot of time.

FORSTADT: Health teacher Christine Wolski keeps things moving at the pantry. The pantry opens for about an hour at the end of the school day, just before students head home. Students get about five minutes to shop.

WOLSKI: Let's go. Let's go. (Speaking Spanish).

FORSTADT: Wolski helped open the pantry at Brashear last year.

WOLSKI: We're getting more and more students because of the SNAP benefits and stuff like that. So we are seeing a lot more students.

FORSTADT: Students like 12th-grader N, who we're identifying only by his first initial. English is N's second language. He's at the pantry to pick up some essentials for the weekend.

N: I see what my mom liked last time and what was not wasted. My favorite thing? I would say this right here. How do you call it? Organ (ph). Maybe pinach (ph).

FORSTADT: Spinach, yeah.

N: Spinach.

FORSTADT: And N is shopping for a big household, including some younger siblings.

And these are the ramen packets you're, like, getting for your siblings, you said?

N: Yeah, yeah, my little siblings 'cause they're very picky.

FORSTADT: N's family relies on SNAP to help put food on the table. N says as of Tuesday afternoon, they're still waiting on this month's payment.

N: I don't know if it's coming in or anything, but yeah, so that. So now we have to spend more money into that, and we got to buy stuff for winter - you know? - 'cause it's about to get cold and stuff so very stressful, very.

FORSTADT: Teacher Christine Wolski says that stress shows up in the classroom.

WOLSKI: If you're not fed, you're not learning. So that's one of the reasons why we're, like, hitting this so hard.

FORSTADT: The pantry at Brashear was created to support student learning. And because of that, Wolski says it will continue to serve students each week, even when the government reopens and SNAP payments go through.

For NPR News, I'm Jillian Forstadt in Pittsburgh.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5598314-e1

Culture

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MOVIE REVIEWS | FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2025 • 11:25 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

'Sirāt' is a desert survival story — and one of the year's most gripping films

By Justin Chang

Heard on Fresh Air

The Arabic word sirāt means "path" or "way"; in Islamic scripture, it refers to a narrow bridge that connects Paradise and Hell. That makes it a fitting title for the director Oliver Laxe's new movie, which is both exhilarating and devastating.

Sirāt is a survival story about several unlikely traveling companions making their way through a godforsaken stretch of the Sahara Desert. It carries echoes of countless earlier films, from the arid landscapes of a John Ford Western to the post-apocalyptic setting of Mad Max. But nothing about Sirāt feels derivative or secondhand. It's an astonishing piece of cinema; I haven't had a more gripping experience in a movie theater all year.

It begins somewhere in southern Morocco, where hundreds of nomadic European revelers have gathered for a rave. It seems that World War III or something like it has broken out, though the specifics are left vague. Whatever's going on, Sirāt initially plays like a party at the end of the world: Imagine a remake of the recent dystopian thriller Civil War set at Burning Man, and you'll have some idea. Laxe sweeps you up in the intense physicality of the dancing and the propulsive beat of the music, composed by the experimental electronic musician Kangding Ray.

Wandering around this unruly desert bacchanal is a middle-aged man named Luis, played by the Spanish actor Sergi López. This clearly isn't Luis' scene. Along with his young son Esteban and their dog, Luis is searching for his 20-something daughter, Mar, who vanished months ago, and whom he has reason to suspect is among the ravers.

But she's nowhere to be found, and before long, armed officials show up and, invoking a state of emergency, break up the party. Amid the ensuing chaos, five ravers drive off, bound for another rave further south. Luis and Esteban impulsively drive after them, hoping against hope that they'll find Mar.

In Laxe's previous films, including the 2016 drama Mimosas, which also chronicled a perilous journey through Morocco, he has worked mainly with non-professional actors. With the exception of López, that's also true here. The director recruited most of the principal cast from raves that he himself attended, and they're all naturals. I especially liked Stefania Gadda as a woman of few words but immense screen presence, and Jade Oukid as a dancer of mesmerizing ability. You feel for these off-the-grid daredevils, and you admire their survival tactics during what will prove to be an exceedingly dangerous trek.

While the ravers have an enormous truck and a camper van, Luis and Esteban are in a small van that's ill-equipped for the treacherous terrain. But the ravers, somewhat reluctantly at first, let them tag along. They all share their limited resources, including food, water and gas. And they help each other out, when Luis has trouble fording a small river, or when the truck gets stuck on a steep mountain road.

Sirāt is a visually and sonically overwhelming experience; it's full of majestic desert vistas and propelled by that thrillingly percussive score. It's also a drama of extraordinary tension and, eventually, shocking tragedy, in which death has a way of striking when you least expect it. I was often reminded of The Wages of Fear and Sorcerer, two classic nail-biters, both adapted from a Georges Arnaud novel about a road trip from hell.

What separates Sirāt from those two films, though, is its lack of cynicism. López is terrific as a father whose child has disappeared and who's understandably wary and mistrustful of the world. But even at his bleakest moments, Luis receives unexpected acts of compassion from his new companions.

At one point, Esteban asks one of the ravers if he misses his family, while traveling on the road, and the raver responds, "I prefer this family." That might sound like something Vin Diesel would say in a Fast and Furious movie, and as it happens, Diesel's driving skills might have come in handy here. But Laxe's film is as sincere in its tenderness as it is unrelenting in its ferocity. There's something powerful about the movie's belief that, even as an apocalypse looms, kindness can survive and meaningful relationships can form. Just because the world is pitiless, Sirāt suggests, doesn't mean that people have to be.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5608107

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LIFE KIT | FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2025 • 5:00 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Dear Life Kit: I'm tall. How do I politely ask people to stop bringing it up?

By Andee Tagle, Sylvie Douglis, Beck Harlan

Dear Life Kit is NPR's advice column, where experts answer tricky questions about relationships, social etiquette, work culture and more. Have a question you want to ask Dear Life Kit anonymously? Share it here.

These questions were answered by Adia Gooden, a clinical psychologist and host of the podcast Unconditionally Worthy, and NPR's Brittany Luse, host of It's Been a Minute.

The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Dear Life Kit, I'm a six-foot-tall woman, and both complete strangers and new acquaintances often make comments like, 'Wow, you're tall.' Some people say I should take it as a compliment, but it makes me feel like a spectacle. I don't want to normalize the comments, but I also don't want to embarrass the commenters. How can I respond? — More than my height

Brittany Luse: I appreciate the fact that you don't want to embarrass people. I want to offer the idea of maybe not 100% embarrassment or even 60% embarrassment, but a nice, gritty little 15% embarrassment. You can respond with, 'Oh my gosh, you're the first person to tell me that.' Give them a little giggle. Give them the opportunity to laugh with you, but they know you're not playing.

And if they don't take the hint the first time, you can be direct. 'Is this catching your attention so much that you have to say something right now?' I think you can give someone one pass with a little joke to let them know you don't like it. And then after that, be really direct.

Adia Gooden: I agree.  If people continue to cross this boundary, be more serious about it. You can say, 'It's not cool. I'm not comfortable with it. Please stop.' If somebody feels a little embarrassed and realizes they shouldn't have said that, that's OK. You're not saying they're an awful person, but you're communicating that what they did is problematic. They should feel a little taste of it so that they stop.

Dear Life Kit, I've been with my boyfriend for seven years. I'm starting to feel pressure from family members and friends to settle down and have a wedding. We're planning to get married, but we want to wait until we are more financially secure. How can I let people know we're not in a hurry to get married without being rude? — Not in a hurry

Gooden: If people are coming from a loving place, just say, 'We're being really intentional about how we want to start the next chapter of our lives together. Weddings are expensive. We don't want to start our lives together in debt or going into debt.'

Luse:  When I was in a similar situation, I would say, 'If you've got tens of thousands of dollars that you want to give me, go right ahead.' Or the other, mildly gentler, response, 'I don't have any updates to share right now, but when I do, you'll be the first to know.' Which is what I say now when people ask me about having children.

Gooden: [If a lighter touch doesn't work,] you can just say, 'Please stop asking us. It's kind of frustrating when you keep asking us about our plans. We will be sure to let you know when we are going in that direction, but until then, please respect our decision-making.'

Dear Life Kit, My future sister-in-law often says things that are hurtful or judgmental. She once told me, 'I love you, but you're too self-absorbed to own a dog.' And this was over a meal that I brought over for her. I've had pets, raised my younger sister and taken care of my sick mom. I don't think most people would consider me self-absorbed. Her comments bring my fiancé and me down. I've begun avoiding her. How can I cope in a healthy way and still have a relationship with her? — Feeling frozen?

Gooden: This might be a situation where you need to recognize when someone's comments are not about you. If you know that you're not self-absorbed, then you shouldn't let somebody's comment derail you or override what you know to be true about yourself.

So, how do you stay grounded in who you are? You need to discern whose opinion you're going to take and whose opinion you're going to leave. If your wise grandma says, 'Hey, it seems like you've been focusing on yourself a little too much, and I want you to think about this.' That might be different than a comment from a sister-in-law who tends to make judgmental comments. She may be somebody whose opinion you're going to ignore.

You may also need to set some boundaries. For example, 'Hey, I feel judged when you give me advice. So I prefer that not to be part of our relationship.'

Luse: At the end of the day, this is your fiancé's sister, and I wonder if he could play a bigger role in managing your relationship with her as a couple. It sounds like maybe he's also feeling the impact of her judgment.

I'll share something my therapist said to me once when I was navigating a difficult relationship: 'Have you ever considered that this person may never change? I want you to consider that, and then think about how you want to conduct yourself going forward.' You can't control her. You can only control how and when you interact with her, to a certain degree.

The podcast episode was hosted by Andee Tagle and produced by Sylvie Douglis. The digital and visual editor was Beck Harlan. We'd love to hear from you. Leave us a voicemail at 202-216-9823, or email us at LifeKit@npr.org.

Listen to Life Kit on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and sign up for our newsletter. Follow us on Instagram: @nprlifekit.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5604667

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CULTURE | THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2025 • 5:11 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Disney eyes a future where users help shape the story

By Chloe Veltman

Heard on All Things Considered

Fans tired of waiting for the next Frozen sequel or the next chapter in the Star Wars saga may soon have new ways to engage with those worlds — by creating their own content using Disney's IP.

That was the tantalizing hint Disney CEO Bob Iger dropped during an earnings call Thursday, as he described how the company is exploring ways to make the Disney+ subscription-based streaming service more interactive, and customizable for users.

While Iger stopped short of making any formal announcements, he suggested Disney is in discussions with artificial intelligence companies about tools that could allow subscribers to generate and share their own content built from Disney-owned stories.

"AI is going to give us the ability to provide users of Disney+ with a much more engaged experience, including the ability for them to create user-generated content," Iger said.

Disney+ declined to offer additional details about what form these new creative tools might take or which tech companies were involved in the negotiations. Meanwhile, AI remains a concern in many parts of the entertainment industry, with many companies including Disney engaged in lawsuits against AI players for copyright infringement.

Iger acknowledged this tension. On the earnings call, the CEO said the company's conversations with potential AI partners are focused on enabling new forms of fan engagement and guarding against uses that could dilute or misuse Disney IP.

"It's obviously imperative for us to protect our IP with this new technology," Iger said.

The trend towards increased interactivity

Disney isn't alone in trying to rethink the boundaries between audiences and the entertainment they consume.

At the recent TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, Netflix's chief technology officer, Elizabeth Stone, offered her own look at a future shaped by deeper user engagement.

"The future of entertainment is likely to be even more personalized, even more interactive, even more immersive," Stone said during an on-stage conversation with TechCrunch editor-in-chief Connie Loizos.

In addition to games and social media videos, one of Netflix's most talked-about experiments in this direction arrives next year: Stone said viewers of the classic talent competition Star Search reboot will be able to cast votes directly from their TVs or phones, influencing which contestants advance – or do not.

Younger audiences and deal-making climate drive quest for interactivity

This engagement layer sits on top of Netflix's vast library of films and TV series. But platform leaders increasingly see passive watching as only part of the picture.

Younger audiences, especially Gen Z, are gravitating toward spaces where they can participate, remix and respond rather than simply watch. According to Deloitte's 2025 Digital Media Trends survey, more than half of Gen Z respondents say social media content feels more relevant to them than traditional TV shows and movies. The research also points to the growing popularity of indie creators, and a change in consumer expectations around quality: Content doesn't always have to be polished to be extremely popular, as some of the most-watched feeds on YouTube and TikTok prove.

At the same time, despite ongoing litigation, entertainment corporations are starting to get comfortable with the idea of licensing content to AI companies. One of the most high-profile in recent weeks is the licensing partnership between Universal Music Group and the AI music creation platform Udio.

"It shows that the AI companies can work with the creative community to come up with models that work for both of them," Copyright Alliance CEO Keith Kupferschmid told NPR regarding this particular deal. "And I think we're going to start seeing more and more deals come through because they realize they can do this and do it the right way."

Transcript

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

OK. Movie fans who are impatient for, say, the release of "Frozen 3" or the next installment of the "Star Wars" franchise might soon be able to create their own mini versions. At least that's what Disney's CEO Bob Iger hinted at on an earnings call today. Here to talk about it is NPR's Chloe Veltman. Hi, Chloe.

CHLOE VELTMAN, BYLINE: Hi, Ailsa.

CHANG: Wait, so what's going on here? What did Iger say exactly?

VELTMAN: Well, I mean, to be clear, the Disney CEO didn't make any firm announcements today. But he did talk about a few interesting ideas the company's exploring, including potentially collaborating with AI companies.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

BOB IGER: AI is going to give us the ability to provide users of Disney+ with a much more engaged experience, including the ability for them to create user-generated content.

VELTMAN: Now, Iger didn't elaborate on exactly what this user-generated content might look like, and Disney+ did not supply more details via email when I wrote to them. But Iger says it would give Disney+ consumers the opportunity to create content and share it with others.

CHANG: Wait, I just - I'm trying to picture this. So are, like, tons of "Toy Story" and "Iron Man" mashups going to be coming to our screen soon? Like, I mean, how will Disney stop misuses of its intellectual property?

VELTMAN: Well, Ailsa, it's probably going to be a balancing act. Iger said the talks Disney has been having with these AI companies are focused both on looking for ways to use the technologies to create more consumer engagement, at the same time, it's important that they protect the value of the company's IP. And Ailsa, Disney isn't the only company thinking about ways to make content more interactive using new technologies.

CHANG: Oh, really? What else are you seeing out there?

VELTMAN: Well, I attended the TechCrunch startup conference in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, and there was quite a bit of talk about this. Here's Netflix's chief technology officer, Elizabeth Stone.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

ELIZABETH STONE: The future of entertainment is likely to be even more personalized, even more interactive, even more immersive.

CHANG: Interactive - so what does Stone say about how this future content might look?

VELTMAN: She said several things, but one thing that really is capturing a lot of attention, including mine, she said Netflix users will be able to interact with the upcoming reboot of the "Star Search" talent show when it launches next year.

CHANG: (Laughter) OK.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

STONE: So if you're sitting at home watching "Star Search" on your TV, you'll be able to, either on the TV or your mobile phone, actually put in a vote that advances or doesn't advance some of the contestants on the show.

VELTMAN: Yeah, neat, huh?

CHANG: Yeah, I guess.

VELTMAN: Yeah, this, of course, is all in addition to the standard movie and TV watching people do on the platform.

CHANG: Well, that's the thing, Chloe. I like regular old movies and TV shows. Aren't they enough? Like, why are companies, such as Disney and Netflix, so interested in moving towards interactivity?

VELTMAN: Well, two words for you, Ailsa - Gen Z. User-generated content is huge with this demographic in particular.

CHANG: Young people.

VELTMAN: Young people. And according to Deloitte's 2025 Digital Media Trend survey, more than half of these people say it's - that this type of user-generated content is more relevant to them than traditional TV content like TV shows and movies. So yeah. And another reason is that entertainment companies are starting to get more comfortable with making deals with tech companies.

CHANG: All right. That is NPR's Chloe Veltman. Thank you so much, Chloe.

VELTMAN: Oh, pleasure, Ailsa.

CHANG: And a note that Walt Disney Pictures is a financial supporter of NPR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5608271

2025 GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN | THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2025 • 2:04 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

'Thrilled to be open': Smithsonian and other museums welcome visitors back

By Elizabeth Blair

The Smithsonian museums, National Gallery of Art and other sites that receive federal funding are announcing their reopening plans now that the government shutdown is over.

While the financial impact of this particular shutdown, the longest in U.S. history, has not yet been calculated, past closures have been costly to museums and other cultural sites that were forced to close. In addition to staff furloughs and suspended or canceled programs, the 2018-2019 shutdown resulted in a loss of some $5 billion, according to the American Alliance of Museums. That figure includes roughly $3.4 million from the Smithsonian's gift shops, concessions and IMAX film screenings and, for the National Gallery of Art, "an estimated 334,000 visitors, including 11,700 schoolchildren, and an estimated $1.2 million in gross revenue from its shops and restaurants," according to a September report from the group.

"We're glad to see these museums are able to reopen, but we know from past shutdowns that cultural institutions lose millions in revenue they can never recover," said Marilyn Jackson, president and CEO of the American Alliance of Museums in an email to NPR, "And it's not just the museums but the restaurants, hotels, and small businesses that depend on cultural tourism who suffer alongside them."

Here's a roundup:

Smithsonian Institution

The Smithsonian, which includes 21 museums and the National Zoo, will reopen on a "rolling basis." Beginning Friday, Nov. 14, the National Museum of American History, the National Air and Space Museum, and the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles International Airport in Chantilly, Virginia will reopen. All other museums and the National Zoo — including the popular animal cams — will reopen by Monday, Nov. 17. Updates will be posted here.

National Gallery of Art

The National Gallery of Art, one of the most visited art museums in the world, will reopen its West Building and outdoor Sculpture Garden on Friday, Nov. 14. The East Building will reopen on Nov. 15. The Gallery's East Building is the first stop on a major U.S. touring exhibition of First Nations art from Australia, which was originally scheduled to open on Oct. 18. The Stars We Do Not See: Australian Indigenous Art, which will now see its first visitors on Saturday, is drawn from the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. After Washington, D.C., the exhibition will travel to museums in Colorado, Oregon and Massachusetts.

Ford's Theatre

The historic Ford's Theatre, a public-private partnership with the National Park Service, was partially closed during the shutdown but is now fully reopened. "We've seen a swell of groups as of this morning at Ford's Theatre," spokesperson Leah Yoon Frelinghuysen tells NPR in an email, "Clearly, visitors are excited to experience what our site has to offer and we are thrilled to be open!"

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5608105

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MOVIE INTERVIEWS | THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2025 • 11:53 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

'Blue Moon' pushed Ethan Hawke to his limit: 'That's a thrilling spot to be in'

By Terry Gross

Heard on Fresh Air

Ethan Hawke admits that he has an obsession with time.

"Acting forces you to be aware of time," he says. "The stories I gravitate to, particularly in the films with [director] Richard Linklater, ... I often think Father Time is the main character of all the films we've done together."

Hawke was only 13 when he made his first film, Explorers. He became a star at 18 with Dead Poets Society. More than 30 years later, he's still acting, except now when he gets a script he forgets he's no longer a young guy.

"I'll be sent a script and it says, 'Billy, age 19, skateboarding down the street,' and I think, 'Oh that's my part,'" Hawke says. "It takes me a while to realize, 'Oh, Billy's father, age 55, gruff and weathered around the edges. ... Oh, that's me."

Hawke says his new film Blue Moon is one of the most challenging of his career. In it, he plays lyricist Lorenz Hart, the original songwriting partner of composer Richard Rodgers. The film captures Hart on the night that Oklahoma!, Rodgers' musical with his new songwriting partner Oscar Hammerstein, debuts. Hart was afraid of being left behind and was a bundle of contradictions, simultaneously proud of his former partner and jealous of his success.

"I felt I was being asked to play two things at the same time, which is of course why I wanna do it," Hawke says. "Every now and then you bump up against a part that presses you to the wall of your ability and you know you can never be as good as the part is demanding of you — and that's a kind of thrilling spot to be in."

Blue Moon is Hawke's ninth collaboration with filmmaker Linklater. (Their previous films include Boyhood and the Before trilogy.) He's also starring in the horror film Black Phone 2 and in the FX streaming series, The Lowdown.

Interview highlights

On working with Linklater on Blue Moon

He knows every trick in my toolbox and he was really asking me to disappear. He just wanted me to be Larry Hart. And so, the man has spent years of his life editing my performances. So anytime he would see me, he would say, "I saw you!" ...

The physical things are kind of easy. ... Anybody can shave their head and do a comb-over. But it was really the soul of a person who was loathing themselves, and at the same time, thinks they're smarter than everybody else. ... Imagine if you only worked with one other person for 25 years and you achieved incredible heights and this person now doesn't wanna work with you anymore. So it's truly heartbreaking for him because I think he's smart enough to know that the world is changing, we're in the middle of the war, the jazz age is being left behind, something new is happening and he's not gonna be a part of it.

On playing a journalist writing about corruption in The Lowdown

It's been a funny year for me because Blue Moon is probably the most different I've ever pushed myself outside the framework of my own identity. And then The Lowdown — I just relate to Lee, he's Quixote, chasing windmills, running into propellers. He's a dreamer and an idealist and self-centered, and doesn't see his own blind spots, and he's a moron, and I just completely relate to him. He can say the right thing all the time and do the wrong thing all of the time. And out of that obviously comes a lot of humor.

I kind of saw Lee as a guy who's frozen in 1996, or something. I'm still wearing the same pants I wore back then. I got the same belt buckle I wore back then. He's still listening to the same music he listened to back then. And I admire him, and I also identify with his shortcomings. [Series creator] Sterlin [Harjo] is really fun to work with. I had a great time on Reservation Dogs. We got along like a house on fire. I can't remember a time I just ran with the character like I did with this one.

On losing his friends River Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman to overdoses

River was very sensitive, extremely sensitive and it's part of his genius. … Some of us get second chances and some of our DNA is hardwired to protect ourselves and some people don't have those guardrails. And I don't understand it, and I know that the answer is you have to know yourself. … Of course it was a warning. But we all get warnings. And I sometimes think a lot of it is accident. I remember when we were 23, I felt that we had lived, and now here I am, I'm about to be 55 years old and I've lived twice as long as River.

River didn't get to be a dad, and River didn't get to have the experiences of the rollercoaster ride of the ups and downs of a profession. I almost feel sadder about his death now, because I'd love to know what he thinks now. He was such a political young man and he was such an idealist. I would love to see what that looked like at 55. And I would like to see the artist that he would be and the art he would have made.

I can't believe that Phil's gone. Half of why I act sometimes is to impress those two men that I was friends with. I think about them all the time when I'm performing, because they were the gauge by which I judged myself — and they still are.

On aging

I feel a desire to work. … I feel I'm aware of how much of the road has already been walked and ... I'm very aware of how many more years I might have to contribute. And I don't like wasting time anymore. I'm aware of how many people mentored me and cared for me. And am I doing that for others? Am I meeting my responsibilities as a citizen? Not just as a father, which is obvious and omnipresent in my life. Those questions are on my mind all the time.

Then there's this other voice, which is, am I enjoying my life? Because I do want to enjoy it, too. And how much of this work that I'm obsessed with is eroding at my sense of play and joy and spontaneity and living and being in the moment. ... It is strange, the older you get, I have no awareness of wisdom, I only have awareness of how many things I thought I understood that I don't understand, and more questions come in the door, and that's kind of exciting.

Lauren Krenzel and Thea Chaloner produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.

Transcript

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. My guest Ethan Hawke stars in two new movies. In "Blue Moon," he plays lyricist Lorenz Hart. In the horror film "Black Phone 2," he's a serial killer who dies and becomes a spirit, and he haunts people's dreams. He also stars in the current FX streaming series "The Lowdown." It's a loving but humorous take on film noir created by Sterlin Harjo, who also directed Hawke in an episode of the popular series "Reservation Dogs." Hawke just completed a new documentary called "Highway 99: A Double Album," about country music star, songwriter, singer and guitarist Merle Haggard. It premiered at the Telluride Film Festival earlier in the fall, where he received the actor tribute. That film is expected to be released sometime next year.

Hawke was in his early teens when he made his first film, "Explorers," co-starring River Phoenix, who was about the same age. He was in his late teens when he co-starred in the "Dead Poets Society," which starred Robin Williams. Hawke seems to have done it all - a child star who survived the experience intact, an Oscar and Tony-nominated actor, a documentary film director and a novelist. Let's start with a clip from "Blue Moon," directed by Richard Linklater. It's set on the night of the opening of "Oklahoma!" - the first musical that Hart's longtime songwriting partner Richard Rodgers wrote with another lyricist, Oscar Hammerstein. There's an after-party at Sardi's, where theater people would go on opening night and wait until the reviews came out. Hart gets there first and talks with the bartender, feeling he's become insignificant because he was abandoned by Rodgers. Rodgers had moved on because Hart had been drinking too much and was no longer a reliable partner. In this scene, after Rodgers arrives, he talks with Hart. Hart's trying to convince Rodgers to collaborate on a satirical musical about Marco Polo. Rodgers is played by Andrew Scott. Ethan Hawke, as Hart, speaks first.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BLUE MOON")

ETHAN HAWKE: (As Lorenz Hart) I mean, "Marco Polo" is going to be a show about joy, but a hard-earned joy, an unsentimental joy.

ANDREW SCOTT: (As Richard Rodgers) Something wrong with sentimental?

HAWKE: (As Lorenz Hart) Well, it's too easy.

SCOTT: (As Richard Rodgers) "Oklahoma!" is too easy? The guy actually getting the girl in the end is too easy? You've just eliminated every successful musical comedy ever written, Larry.

HAWKE: (As Lorenz Hart) It's too easy for me.

SCOTT: (As Richard Rodgers) Did you hear the audience tonight?

HAWKE: (As Lorenz Hart) Yes.

SCOTT: (As Richard Rodgers) Sixteen hundred people didn't think it was too easy. You're telling me 1,600 people were wrong?

HAWKE: (As Lorenz Hart) I'm just saying, you and I can do something so much more emotionally complicated. We don't have to pander to what...

SCOTT: (As Richard Rodgers) So Oscar and I are pandering?

HAWKE: (As Lorenz Hart) No. I didn't say that.

SCOTT: (As Richard Rodgers) Irving Berlin is pandering?

HAWKE: (As Lorenz Hart) I love Berlin.

SCOTT: (As Richard Rodgers) "White Christmas" is pandering?

HAWKE: (As Lorenz Hart) Well, I don't believe "White Christmas."

SCOTT: (As Richard Rodgers) OK.

(LAUGHTER)

SCOTT: (As Richard Rodgers) Well, maybe audiences have changed.

HAWKE: (As Lorenz Hart) Well, they still love to laugh.

SCOTT: (As Richard Rodgers) They want to laugh, but not in that way.

HAWKE: (As Lorenz Hart) In what way?

SCOTT: (As Richard Rodgers) In your way. They want to laugh, but they also want to cry a little. They want to feel.

GROSS: Ethan Hawke, welcome to FRESH AIR, and congratulations on all the new work you've been doing. I've been really enjoying it. You said that making "Blue Moon" stretched you and the director Richard Linklater to, like, the boundaries of your abilities. What made it so hard for you and so different?

HAWKE: Well, first off, I guess the emotional complexity. I mean, there's the verbiage, the - Larry Hart is at this opening night party, and it's kind of like he feels if he ever stops talking, he's going to be shot and killed. And so he just cannot stop talking.

GROSS: (Laughter).

HAWKE: So there was the amount of text I had to learn, but then...

GROSS: Yeah.

HAWKE: ...There's the complication. He's incredibly - what is it? It's called the correlation of opposites. He's two things simultaneously all the time. He is incredibly jealous, and he's incredibly happy and proud of his friend. He's gay and in love with a woman. He's the most diminutive, smallest person in the room, and he's the biggest personality in the room. The whole experience of making it, I felt I was being asked to play two things at the same time, which is, of course, why I want to do it. It was wonderful, and it was like the way real people are. But it's challenging. Every now and then, you do - you bump up against a part that presses you to the wall of your ability, and you know you can never be as good as the part is demanding of you. And that's a kind of thrilling spot to be in.

GROSS: So you're playing someone who thinks that their height, their hair makes them really ugly and unappealing. Plus, he's gay and he has to hide that from the public, from the people...

HAWKE: Well, it was illegal in 1943.

GROSS: Yeah.

HAWKE: So he does have to hide it. Yeah.

GROSS: No, absolutely. Right, right. So in a way, like, talking all the time is a distraction from all the things that he thinks are unappealing about him. And he's also very short. I think he's, like, 5 feet or under. You're pretty tall, and you had to have a comb-over for it, which is literally not attractive.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: So you had to feel very much not like yourself.

HAWKE: Well, it was interesting. I was being directed by a man who's directed me, and this is our ninth film collaboration. So he's - he knows every trick in my toolbox. And he was really asking me to disappear. I was - he wanted - he just wanted me to be Larry Hart. And so, I mean, the man has spent years of his life editing my performances. So anytime he would see me, he would say, I saw you. I saw you. I saw you. And he was...

GROSS: I saw you, Ethan Hawke, and not Larry Hart.

HAWKE: Yeah, and not Larry. And so the physical things are kind of - you know, they're kind of easy. They're superficial, ultimately, if they don't unlock the soul of the man, right? Anybody can shave their head and do a comb-over and - but it was really the soul of a person who's loathing themselves and, at the same time, thinks they're smarter than everybody else. And his intellect is his only power. His pride in his work is his only self-worth. And that is being stripped from him on this night.

I mean, imagine if you only worked with one other person for 25 years and you achieved incredible heights, and this person now doesn't want to work with you anymore. So it's truly heartbreaking for him 'cause I think he's smart enough to know that the world is changing. We're in the middle of the war. The jazz age is being left behind. Something new is happening, and he's not going to be a part of it. And he feels a titanic plate shifting, you know, and he's being sent away to Antarctica or something. I mean, that's what I think he feels.

GROSS: So I'm under 5 feet tall, and I might be shorter than he was. So how did playing somebody short and having to look up at people - what did you learn about my life at my height (laughter)?

HAWKE: The world is so stupid in the way that it imagines power and intelligence and grace and, you know, tall and handsome, tall equating power, tall equating authority. It doesn't. Beauty is as beauty does. We all know this. It was - as a male, I think it's even more different because I remember there was a man who was really helping me with the height and how to achieve it. We were kind of trying to do it with old-school stagecraft. And he had built a floor that he could put his feet through and then wear his shoes on his shins, so he really appeared a foot shorter than he did. And his wife, who - they've been together for decades, came to him and was looking at him. She's like, wow, if you were this tall, I wouldn't love you. And it was really a heartbreaking experience for him that he really wanted to share with me that confused him deeply about how - what we associate as sexuality, what we associate with strength. And it did unlock for me, I mean, just even all my normal ways of flirting. I have all these scenes with Margaret Qualley, who's a beautiful young woman. And she would just giggle at everything I say and pat me on top of the head, and it was extremely patronizing. And you had to find a different set of tools to get her attention. So I don't know that I could speak intelligently about it, but I could feel it in my guts.

GROSS: I need to take a short break here, so let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is Ethan Hawke. And one of the movies he's currently starring in is "Blue Moon," in which he plays lyricist Larry Hart. We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF GRAHAM REYNOLDS' "BLUE MOON")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Ethan Hawke. He's starring in the new film "Blue Moon," playing lyricist Larry Hart. He's the villain in the new horror film "Black Phone 2." He stars in the current FX streaming series "The Lowdown" and was also in an episode of "Reservation Dogs." They were both created by Sterlin Harjo.

So you've played at least two brilliant but self-destructive artists, Chet Baker, the great jazz trumpeter and singer, who had several addictions, and Larry Hart, who died of complications from drinking way too much. It's not uncommon for talented artists. Oh, and River Phoenix, who you worked with, died of an overdose.

HAWKE: Philip Seymour Hoffman.

GROSS: Oh, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Yes, right. It's not uncommon for talented artists to have a self-destructive side or a need for the kind of medication that they believe, you know, the addiction provides for. Do you feel like you understand why those two things so often go together?

HAWKE: Well, first off, I think humanity experiences this. I think we see it in public figures and artists because we're in the public more. Issues of addiction are complicating and destroying so much of society. And so many people are in pain. And these are painkillers. And I think the artistic community, to be driven to create usually is motivated by some sensitivity and extreme sensitivity. I don't know, I have seen it my whole life.

You mentioned River. And that was an extremely complex and upsetting thing that happened in my early 20s, his passing. And then middle age brings its own demons, which happened to my friend Phil. And I think part of my collaboration with Rick and part of why I love working with Richard Linklater is he has so much joy in his life. And he didn't, when I was young and becoming friends with him, he was one of the first artists I met who really didn't see self-destruction as a romantic well to draw from. He had so much joy and love of life.

But I do enjoy playing these parts because I do understand it. I grew up with so many men of the theater who were in so much pain. And they were some of the most ferociously intelligent and kind and good people that were full of so much self-loathing. And when I first read the script, I was desperate to play this guy.

GROSS: Larry Hart?

HAWKE: Yeah, yeah.

GROSS: Yeah. So River Phoenix, who you made your first movie with him, "The Explorers." So he died at age 23 in 1993 of an OD of morphine and cocaine. Was that a warning for you, you know, like, don't touch this stuff? Like, were you ever seduced by the relief of addictive drugs?

HAWKE: I don't know. What flashes through my mind is when River and I were doing "The Explorers," we both were at a - we both love James Dean. And James Dean smoked Camel unfiltered cigarettes. And we thought it would be cool to go out and we stole a pack of Camel unfiltereds and went out in this field and smoked three of them. And River turned green, and he vomited.

And when he passed, I thought about that moment, that we all have different bodies. And some of us can press the limit, and our bodies can handle it, and we can learn from it. And some of us turn green. And River was very sensitive, extremely sensitive. And it's part of his genius. I don't know. Does that make sense to you, what I'm trying to communicate?

GROSS: Yeah. No, yes, yes.

HAWKE: And some of us get second chances. And some of us, our DNA is hardwired to protect ourselves. And some people don't have those guardrails. And I don't understand it. And I know that the answer is, you have to know yourself. And, yes, to your question, was it a warning? Of course it was a warning. But we all get warnings. And I sometimes think a lot of it is accident. And I wish - I remember when we were 23, I felt that we had lived.

And now, here I am, you know, I'm about to be 55 years old. And I've lived twice as long as River. River didn't get to be a dad, and River didn't get to have the experiences of the roller coaster ride of the ups and downs of a profession. I almost feel sadder about his death now because I would love to see him. I'd love to see what he thinks now. He was such a political young man, and he was such an idealist. I would love to see what that looked like at 55.

GROSS: Yeah.

HAWKE: And I would love to see the artist that he would be and the art he would've made. I can't believe that Phil's gone. Half of why I act sometimes is to impress those two men that I was friends with, you know? I mean, I think about them all the time when I'm performing because they were the gauge by which I judged myself, and they still are.

GROSS: I want to ask you about time. The film "Boyhood" was shot, directed by Richard Linklater, who just directed you in "Blue Moon." It was shot over 12 years. And as this family aged, as the children and the divorced parents aged, the actors aged. So that was a long-term commitment. "Blue Moon" takes place on one evening. It's practically shot in real time. So making movies that play with time like that, especially "Boyhood" over 12 years, I'm wondering if that has shaped your understanding of time, what time means to you.

HAWKE: It has so much. And you're not even mentioning the "Before" trilogy, which...

GROSS: Oh, yes. No, that's right.

HAWKE: ...We shot over 18 years.

GROSS: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

HAWKE: And, you know...

GROSS: And each movie was separated by a few years.

HAWKE: Nine years.

GROSS: Yeah.

HAWKE: Yeah. I think it's part of the hook of Linklater and I's friendship as we both have a obsession with it, think about it all the time. It's omnipresent in our awareness. And I think that acting - "Dead Poets Society" came out, and I started being sent scripts. I'm 18, 19 years old. And now I'll be sent a script, and it says, Billy (ph), age 19, skateboarding down the street. And I always think, oh, that's my part. It's just the way I read scripts. It takes me a while to realize, oh, Billy's father, age 55, gruff and weathered around the edges. I'm like, oh, that's me.

GROSS: (Laughter).

HAWKE: I'm forced always to look at that. I remember watching the first screening of "Boyhood" with - Patricia Arquette and I were sitting next to each other, and she's...

GROSS: And she co-stars with you.

HAWKE: Yeah. And she leans over to me and says, wow, they're growing up, and we're aging. And it's funny. I don't know where that turn happens where we stop thinking of ourselves as growing, but acting forces you to be aware of time. Cinema naturally does it. The stories I gravitate to, particularly in the films with Richard Linklater, seem to be - I often think Father Time is the main character of all the films we've done together.

GROSS: And you've made - what? - nine of them now.

HAWKE: Yeah. Yeah.

GROSS: So how is getting older affecting your relationship with the passage of time?

HAWKE: Well, you're just hitting me with some real lightweight questions here.

GROSS: Yeah, you're welcome.

HAWKE: (Laughter) You know? Well, it's arresting for anybody, you know, I think when you get over the age of 50. It is. I feel it very powerfully. I feel a desire to work. I don't know if you feel that, but I feel I'm aware of how much of the road has already been walked. And I'm very conscious of - I find myself often thinking, how old was Jeff Bridges when he did "True Grit"? Am I older than him now? Am I younger than him? How old was Peter Weir when he directed "Dead Poets Society"? I'm older than he was now. I thought he was an old man.

I'm very aware of how many more years I might have to contribute, and I don't like wasting time anymore. I'm very aware of how many people mentored me and cared for me, and am I doing that for others? Am I meeting my responsibilities as a citizen? Not just as a father, which is obvious and omnipresent in my life. The questions are on my mind all the time. Then there's this other voice, which is, am I enjoying my life? And I - 'cause I do want to enjoy it, too. And how much of this work that I'm obsessed with is eroding at my sense of play and joy and spontaneity and living and being in the moment? And it is strange. The older you get - I have no awareness of wisdom. I only have awareness of how many things I thought I understood that I don't understand, and more questions come in the door. And that's kind of exciting. What do you think?

GROSS: Well, about aging, I mean, there comes a moment when you realize you're not the young person anymore. And then how people look at you changes as you get older.

HAWKE: You know, I'm an actor, right? So I have a talent agent. And I remember being really proud of myself. At one time, I noticed I was the youngest client they had, and I was kind of proud of that. And now, often I'm the oldest person in the room, you know? I did this movie "Black Phone 2," and there's all these young people around, and they're looking at me and talking to me as if I know something.

GROSS: (Laughter).

HAWKE: And I'm not positive that I do.

GROSS: Well, we have to take another break, so I'm going to reintroduce you again. If you're just joining us, my guest is Ethan Hawke. And among the new things he's starring in are "Blue Moon," about lyricist Larry Hart, and the Sterlin Harjo take on film noir, which is called "The Lowdown." We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF DAVE MCKENNA'S "HAVE YOU MET MISS JONES")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Ethan Hawke. He stars in two new movies. In "Blue Moon," he plays lyricist Larry Hart. In the horror film "Black Phone 2," he's a spirit in a devil's mask who haunts people's dreams. He's also in the current FX streaming series "The Lowdown," the loving but humorous take on film noir created by Sterlin Harjo, who also created the series "Reservation Dogs" and directed Hawke in one episode. Hawke just completed a new documentary called "Highway 99: A Double Album," about country music star, songwriter, singer and guitarist Merle Haggard.

I want to ask you a little bit about your documentary you made a few years ago called "Seymour: An Introduction." And it's about the pianist and composer Seymour Bernstein, who gave up a career as a touring pianist giving recitals. But he grew just really disillusioned with the life he was leading, performing all the time, traveling. And he gave it up after years as a performer and decided that his calling was teaching as a private teacher to, you know, a very talented pianist. And he's also very wise. You met him at a dinner party, and you'd asked him a couple of, you know, pretty profound questions, and he gave you interesting answers. So this documentary is all about him, and he was, I think, in his 80s when you made it. And he's in his late 90s now?

HAWKE: Yes.

GROSS: Yeah. So I want to play an excerpt of a conversation that you had with him that's in the film. And you tell him you're entering the second half of your life and thinking about what you want out of this next phase.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "SEYMOUR: AN INTRODUCTION")

HAWKE: I'm looking at myself, and I'm saying, you have the second half of your life ahead of you. If it's not for material gain, if I don't have a specific religious calling, what is it that I'm living it for? The whole system of life is geared to make you think about success. Often, doing my art the best and equating that with any kind of financial success are just - they're just wildly at odds with one another.

SEYMOUR BERNSTEIN: Of course they are.

HAWKE: And so...

BERNSTEIN: They can even get in the way of one another.

HAWKE: Yeah. So the most successful things I've done have been some of the worst things I've done. And sometimes I think that just playing life more beautifully is what I'm after, but I don't know how to do it.

BERNSTEIN: But don't you do it through acting?

HAWKE: Well, I don't know. Well, would you - I want to do it through acting. Yeah.

GROSS: So are art and success getting closer for you with films like "Boyhood," "Blue Moon," the streaming series "Reservation Dogs" and "The Lowdown," "The Good Lord Bird"?

HAWKE: They are. And listening to it right now, I realized that that movie was kind of my midlife crisis. And, you know, I could really credit Seymour for redirecting my life, giving me permission to be the grown person I aspire to be, to give me permission to go after that. Some of the things you just mentioned are my favorite things I've done, and there has been more unity between myself and what I'm putting forth into the world in this period of my life. And I'd be lying if I didn't say, you know, that movie is also the first film I worked on with my wife. We started a little mom-and-pop production company, and something about working with her kind of united these disparate parts of my brain, where I wasn't compartmentalizing work and home life anymore, that they were becoming one thing.

GROSS: I want to mention something that is also something that you mentioned to Seymour Bernstein, the pianist. You told him you had stage fright and talked to him a little bit about that. Under what circumstances did you have stage fright? Was it just literally on stage? 'Cause you've also done a lot of theater. Was it also on screen when you can, like, do a retake?

HAWKE: Because of his warmth, I felt unashamed to say to him, what do you do about stage fright? Because I was about 40. I'd been a child actor, and I had so much confidence about acting. And both on film and on stage, I was having anxiety attacks and panic attacks, and I really had no mechanisms to deal with it or understand it. And this man just smiled at me and looked at me really intensely, and he said, oh, this is very good. This is very exciting. You're about to have a breakthrough. And I was like, what do you mean? And he's like, well, you're finally understanding and respecting you should be nervous. Your anxiety is your friend. Let it be your friend. This is guiding you towards excellence. And you don't need to see this as a problem at all. And he was very profound about loving yourself and making friends with your demons and being proud of the fact that you care.

GROSS: But you said you thought when you had that stage fright, that you were going to die. Why was it death that you thought would be the final symptom of stage fright, as opposed to just humiliation and never working again?

HAWKE: Well, that's a very interesting question, and that really is the essence of why I think I wanted to play "Blue Moon." When your entire self-worth is wrapped up in your work - that was the real struggle. I didn't have any self-worth besides my work. And so it was death. If I went out on stage at Lincoln Center, a place that I have the utmost respect for and an establishment that I view as significant, if I humiliate myself performing the greatest writer in the English language, William Shakespeare, then I'm not an actor. And if I'm not an actor, then I'm dead. I don't have - I'm not anybody. That was the way my thinking was at the time, so of course I'd be scared. And so I needed to start rooting self-worth. It wasn't just about being an actor, you know?

And I felt that way very much, I think, when I read the script for "Blue Moon." Oh, wow, Larry Hart. If he doesn't have his music, he's nothing. He's absolutely nothing. He's a ghost. He's dead. If he cannot save his work, then he's gone. And no wonder you'd start to hit the bottle, and you'd hit it hard.

GROSS: And he literally died several months after.

HAWKE: Yeah, he did.

GROSS: You tell a story - and I think it's in John Lahr's profile of you in The New Yorker - about how one of the ways you overcame the stage fright was the story of when you screamed on stage. Would you tell that story? I'll preface this with a story that Seymour Bernstein told you about a violinist he knows, who was afraid he'd drop his bow during a performance.

HAWKE: Yes, exactly.

GROSS: And he conquered that fear by intentionally dropping it during a performance, and it didn't ruin his life.

HAWKE: Yeah. And I think the story that I told John Lahr must have been - I had an incredible moment on stage. So I'm out on stage, and I'm doing this monologue. And I just kind of decide to take a moment and look out at the audience, and I saw my director. I made eye contact with him, Jack O'Brien, and I admire him wildly. He's a genius theater director. And then I looked to the left, and there was Tom Stoppard, just one of my favorite human beings on the planet Earth. And I was thinking to myself, what an amazing moment this is to be in the Lincoln Center with these people I wildly admire. And I knew it was one of the last times I was going to be doing the show. It was certainly the last time they would be there. And I was having this kind of wonderful moment. I realized I had no idea where I was in the monologue. But I couldn't remember if I'd begun the monologue or whether I was finished with the monologue or if I was in the middle of it. And I just completely froze.

And finally, I just screamed. I mean, I really did not know what else to do. And I went into the monologue from the beginning. And like a hurricane, I went into it, and I came off stage just wildly embarrassed. I was like, what happened? What happened? And after the show, Stoppard told me, it was wonderful the way you started again. I was like, well, it wasn't really wonderful. I mean, it might have come across that way, but it - and I started realizing that if you are actually in the moment, you actually can't do anything wrong. You really can't. It's going to be fine 'cause you're going to be living. And it's this desire to be perfect that's stifling.

GROSS: But getting out of the moment and thinking about who was in the audience, that made you lose your train of thought as your character. That's what made you freak out where you were in the monologue, right?

HAWKE: Exactly, yeah.

GROSS: Yeah. Well, it's time to take another break, so let me reintroduce you. My guest is Ethan Hawke, and he stars in the new movie "Blue Moon" about Larry Hart, and he also stars in the new streaming series "The Lowdown." We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF STAN GETZ QUARTET'S "THERE'S A SMALL HOTEL")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Ethan Hawke. He stars as lyricist Lorenz Hart in the new movie "Blue Moon" and in Sterlin Harjo's FX streaming series "The Lowdown." Hawke has directed several documentaries. The first was "Seymour: An Introduction," about a brilliant pianist. When we left off, we were talking about a clip in that film, where Hawke asked Seymour for advice about his own career.

So when you were talking to Seymour Bernstein about the second half of your life and what do you want from it, and you were saying, like, if I don't have, like, a religious calling and - yeah, and I was wondering, why did you mention religious calling? Did you ever think that is what you wanted?

HAWKE: Yes. And I think I was - as a young person, I was thinking that a certain discipline, religious discipline could lend order to my life, you know, whether I loved a lot of the great Catholic writers, and I love a lot of the great Buddhist writers. And I was constantly hoping that their discipline could work for me and give me guidance and direction and orientation in my life. But I kept struggling with it, and I would struggle to stay on that path. And finally, it was my oldest daughter who realized, Dad, you got to stop struggling. You have your path. Your path is the arts, and your discipline has manifest in your life as an actor. That is your religious calling. That sounds pretentious perhaps on a radio show, but it's even true in a scary movie or in a silly noir set in Tulsa. You're celebrating people and life and humanity and what we're up against, and that has faith attached to it.

GROSS: You were raised as Episcopalian. Your mother taught Sunday school. And you actually went on missions over the summer. And in an earlier interview we did, you described your missionary work not as proselytizing, but as, like, free labor...

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: ...Helping people build latrines and build roofs. And you did that in Kentucky and West Virginia and the back hollows. And one summer, you went to Haiti and worked with Mother Teresa's order in the House of the Dying. Can you describe the House of the Dying? Like, what was that exactly?

HAWKE: Well, it was during the, you know, AIDS crisis in Haiti in the late '80s. And the nuns, the order there, they would - they just had a home where you could die with peace and grace and dignity. And so men, mostly all men, could come and die and be bathed and clean. And it's very, very beautiful. And these women were incredibly dedicated to their faith and really inspiring.

My mother was going through a phase where she was really worried I was turning into a superficial little snot who cared about, you know, whether his shirt was an Izod or Ralph Lauren or something like that. And so she took me there. She's a really inspiring and fascinating woman. Of course, when you're growing up, you don't see that. You just - you know, your parents are just your parents, and they're annoying. But her faith was very important to her, my father, too. And they gave me that, a longing for that. And they showed me how it can open up and deepen your life and give you something to live for that's bigger than, you know, your wants and needs and desires. And it lent itself to the life of artists - the life I've pursued - very well.

GROSS: I want to talk with you about "The Lowdown." I'm really enjoying this, and you play an investigative journalist for a kind of underground paper. I can't remember whether you correct the person as - whether he says it's a magazine.

HAWKE: A long-form magazine.

GROSS: Yes.

HAWKE: A long-form magazine.

GROSS: Yeah. He calls it a paper, and you say, no, it's a long-form magazine. And you are very, very eccentric. You investigate, like, power and corruption in Tulsa, where this is set. And you also break all the rules of journalism. You get beaten up a lot. And unlike, like, the tough guys in a lot of hard-boiled film noir and in novels, like, when you get beaten up, like, you hurt. And you're like - you're crying out in pain.

HAWKE: I cry. Yeah, I know.

GROSS: Yeah. Yeah. And so I want to play a short scene. This is toward the beginning of the first episode. So you're investigating a powerful, wealthy guy who runs an investment company, has been buying up a lot of Black-owned businesses, and you're wondering, like, what's this about? Tracy Letts plays that guy. You've walked into his office, dressed way too casually for a meeting like this, and you start looking around the room, picking up things, examining them, sniffing the carafe of brandy and being intentionally sarcastic and rude. So let's pick it up with the clip.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE LOWDOWN")

TRACY LETTS: (As Frank Martin) Nice to meet you in person.

HAWKE: (As Lee Raybon) Yeah.

LETTS: (As Frank Martin) We do have a lot of other business.

HAWKE: (As Lee Raybon) Yes. I'm sure you do. This place is so fancy. I've never even been back here.

LETTS: (As Frank Martin) Well, yeah, just some of the perks.

HAWKE: (As Lee Raybon) Yeah, I should have gone in the investment firm business - huh? - instead of rare books.

LETTS: (As Frank Martin) But you are a journalist, too, though, right? Or some kind of writer?

HAWKE: (As Lee Raybon) I'm a truthstorian (ph).

LETTS: (As Frank Martin) Sorry, say again?

HAWKE: (As Lee Raybon) I am a Tulsa truthstorian.

LETTS: (As Frank Martin) A truthstorian. What exactly is a truthstorian?

HAWKE: (As Lee Raybon) I'm glad you asked. I read stuff. I research stuff. I drive around, and I find stuff. Then I write about stuff. Some people care. Some people don't. I'm chronically unemployed, always broke. Let's just say that I am obsessed with the truth.

LETTS: (As Frank Martin) How about that?

GROSS: So, Ethan Hawke, the series is inspired by film noir, but it's also kind of a satire of the genre. Your character talks tough, but, as I said, gets beaten up a lot. Are you a fan of noir novels? You know, hard-boiled novels or film noir?

HAWKE: I am. I love it. I mean, I'll never forget the first time I saw "Chinatown" or "The Long Goodbye" or "The Big Lebowski," for that matter, or some of the other Philip Marlowe - Bogart. You know, I love all that stuff. And, you know, one of the things I love about genre films is you can use the genre to be entertaining, and you can fill the story up with substance and message and ideas. But it's still entertaining because you're inside this genre.

GROSS: So what was your take on this character? Like, what did you model him on?

HAWKE: I loved this character. It's been a funny year for me because "Blue Moon" is probably the most different I've ever pushed myself outside the framework of my own identity. And then "The Lowdown" is just - I just relate to Lee. He's Quixote chasing windmills and running into propellers. He's a dreamer and an idealist and self-centered and doesn't see his own blind spots, and he's a moron, and I just completely relate to him. And he can say the right thing all the time and do the wrong thing all the time. And out of that, obviously comes a lot of humor. I kind of saw Lee as a guy who's frozen in 1996 or something.

GROSS: (Laughter).

HAWKE: I'm still wearing the same pants I wore back then. I got the same belt buckle I wore back then. He's still listening to the same music he listened to back then. And I admire him. And I also identify with his shortcomings. And Sterlin is really fun to work with. I had a great time on "Reservation Dogs." We got along like a house on fire, and I can't remember a time I just ran with the character like I did with this one.

GROSS: Well, it's time to take another break. So let me reintroduce you. My guest is Ethan Hawke, and he stars in the new movie "Blue Moon" about Larry Hart, and he also stars in the new streaming series "The Lowdown." We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MOLLY LEWIS' "THE FORGOTTEN EDGE")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Ethan Hawke. He stars in "Blue Moon" about Larry Hart and also in the new streaming series "The Lowdown."

You've done several movies about music. You have a new documentary that hasn't come out yet about Merle Haggard. You did a documentary about the pianist Seymour Bernstein. You played Chet Baker in a theatrical film, and...

HAWKE: I made the film "Blaze."

GROSS: Yes...

HAWKE: Blaze Foley.

GROSS: ...About Blaze Foley. Yeah. So, when did you become really interested in music, and were you ever in a band?

HAWKE: I don't remember life without music. My father's a great pianist, and I'm...

GROSS: Oh, what kind of music does he play?

HAWKE: Well, when I was little, he used to play a lot of Scott Joplin, and I loved to lay under the piano and listen to him play these rags. And I don't know why, but music has always been that place I go to. I don't know, you put on a good record, and everything is fine. Everything's going to be OK. And I also think that I love acting. Acting is my job, and to understand acting, I've gotten into directing, and to understand acting, I've gotten into writing. But music's one thing I can't really do. I mean, I try, but I'm not good at it at all, but I love it. And my inability to do it well has only increased my fandom, my geekdom, my absolute hero worship of the people who can do it well. And I think I really love being a fan.

GROSS: Why did Merle Haggard make such a good subject for a documentary?

HAWKE: Well, it was coming up on the last presidential election, and I had this realization that no matter who won, half the country was going to be absolutely despondent. And I found myself thinking a lot about Merle Haggard and how much he crossed the boundaries between left and right and what a free thinker he was. You know, he spent the first nine years of his professional stardom as the new Woody Guthrie. And then he wrote this funny song called "Okie From Muskogee" that was basically a really, really funny song asking the left wing to consider how the right wing might feel. And the left wing responded with absolute vehemence and felt betrayed and were angry at him. And then he was claimed by Nixon and touted as the, you know, voice of the silent majority.

And then he went on and wrote songs about civil rights that weren't released and promoted because the label weren't excited by that, or they were worried he was going to lose fans. And he wrote pro-immigration songs, and those were ignored. And then, slowly, the right wing lost interest in him as their spokesperson. And he just was always himself. And he didn't follow anyone else's bandwagon. And he was a humanist. And I thought he might be a great person to revisit right now as our country is so kind of team-oriented and not speaking to each other. And that was the pull.

GROSS: So...

HAWKE: Not to mention he's a genius songwriter, and he's one of the great American songwriters. And I feel that his star has been receding in popular culture, and I kind of wanted to remind everybody about what a legend he was.

GROSS: Well, we should end with some music. Do you have a preference?

HAWKE: You know, why don't we - why don't you pick your favorite version of "My Funny Valentine"?

GROSS: Chet Baker.

HAWKE: Let's do Chet because that song has been following me my whole life.

GROSS: Why?

HAWKE: I don't know, it just has. We listened to it while we were writing "Before Sunrise," and then I played Chet Baker, and then now I'm playing Lorenz Hart. And this song even makes an appearance in "The Lowdown." So it's...

GROSS: That's right. I figured that was a tribute to you.

HAWKE: Well, it's a tribute to Sterlin and I's friendship. But that song is following me. And so let's listen to Chet.

GROSS: Very good. Always happy to do that (laughter). Ethan Hawke, it's just been great to talk with you. Thank you so much. And again, congratulations on all the work you've been doing.

HAWKE: Thanks.

GROSS: So many good things.

HAWKE: I'm tired after all the questions you asked me.

GROSS: (Laughter).

HAWKE: I love your show and I love NPR. And I really appreciate what you guys do. And I'm just thrilled to be on your program, so thanks for having me.

GROSS: Oh, thank you for saying that. And it's so great to have you.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MY FUNNY VALENTINE")

CHET BAKER: (Singing) My funny Valentine, sweet comic Valentine, you make me smile with my heart. Your looks are laughable, unphotographable, yet you're my favorite work of art. Is your figure less than Greek? Is your mouth a little weak? When you open it to speak, are you smart?

GROSS: Ethan Hawke stars in the new films "Blue Moon," "Black Phone 2" and in the FX streaming series "The Lowdown." If you'd like to catch up on FRESH AIR interviews you missed - like this week's interviews with actor Tim Robbins, nutritionist policy expert Marion Nestle or New Yorker staff writer Antonia Hitchens, who wrote a profile of Laura Loomer - check out our podcast. You'll find lots of FRESH AIR interviews. And to find out what's happening behind the scenes of our show and get our producers' recommendations for what to watch, read and listen to, subscribe to our free newsletter at whyy.org/freshair.

FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Briger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Susan Nyakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Our consulting visual producer is Hope Wilson. Thea Chaloner directed today's show. Our cohost is Tonya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.

(SOUNDBITE OF CHET BAKER SONG, "MY FUNNY VALENTINE")

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5601773

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CULTURE | THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2025 • 9:21 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Cast your vote for NPR's Pod Club Awards!

By NPR Staff

We're wrapping up the year by celebrating the podcasts we love with NPR's first-ever Pod Club Awards!

We're honoring the most memorable episodes of the year, and YOU get to crown the winner of the People's Choice Award.

Want to find out if your pick wins? We'll announce all the winners in the Pod Club newsletter, so make sure you're signed up!

Voting deadline is December 5.

Your submission will be governed by our general Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. As the Privacy Policy says, we want you to be aware that there may be circumstances in which the exemptions provided under law for journalistic activities or freedom of expression may override privacy rights you might otherwise have.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/g-s1-97569

2025 GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN | THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2025 • 5:00 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

SNAP funding pause to soon end, but anxiety and anger may linger

By Jennifer Ludden

Heard on All Things Considered

The end of the nation's longest government shutdown means food assistance for 42 million Americans should soon be restored after a nearly two week halt.

But suspending funding to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as SNAP, may have long-lasting impacts, say some experts and those who depend on the program to feed their families.

Jacqueline Giammona, a single working mom of two boys, relies on SNAP for most of her groceries. By last week, her pantry and freezer were near empty.

The Sacramento, Calif., resident was among those in some states who saw November benefits hit the EBT card they use to buy food, amid back-and-forth legal wranglings that reached the Supreme Court.

"I was really relieved," she said, but there was a nagging feeling in her gut. "Okay, what if they take it away?'"

Giammona can't fathom why the government would deprive low-income people of a necessity like food. She considers it an "abuse of power" with lasting consequences.

"People are going to distrust the government, and I think that people are going to be really angry about it for a long time," she said.

SNAP is the country's largest anti-hunger program, serving the 1 in 8 U.S. residents who live at or just above the poverty line. For more than 60 years it has stood as a key safety-net for those in need.

Funded each year by Congress, its budget is designed to grow and shrink to meet the demand. To see it compromised was startling, said Craig Gundersen, an economics professor at Baylor University.

"This is a big surprise," Gundersen said. "It really has broken this entitlement status of SNAP, and that's of concern."

President Donald Trump has been a critic of SNAP. During the shutdown, he called it out as one of the "Democrat programs" he pledged to cut. On his social media platform Truth Social he falsely claimed former President Joe Biden randomly gave benefits "to anyone for the asking, as opposed to just those in need."

In late October, as the government shutdown wore on, the U.S. Department of Agriculture posted on its website that it would not pay the full $8 billion in SNAP benefits due for November. The message blamed Democrats for the shutdown and the consequent suspension of payments.

Crystal FitzSimons, president of the Food Research & Action Center, said she felt "shock, outrage, disbelief."

"It was a policy choice that was made by this administration," she said.

The administration challenged the ruling of three lower courts that it had reserve funds to pay full SNAP benefits, arguing it needed the money for other children nutrition programs. The Agriculture Department said it had about $4.5 billion in a contingency fund that would cover roughly half of November's benefits. Two judges said the administration should tap other reserves to make up the difference.

The deal cut by Congress to reopen the government funds SNAP through September 2026. But FitzSimons is nervous that the program could be used again as a negotiation tactic.

"Once you break a taboo," she said, "it's that much easier to break a taboo."

Ideally, she'd like to see lawmakers pass a bill to ensure there is no future delay in SNAP benefits, even in a government shutdown.

"Could Congress compel USDA to actually act? They could," she says. "I'm not sure that we'll be able to get that done before Oct. 1, 2026."

Some advocates also worry the SNAP disruption will dissuade people who face hunger from getting help.

"By making SNAP payments uncertain the shutdown will likely further decrease the number of eligible people who will apply," said Joel Berg, CEO of the nonprofit Hunger Free America.

The Agriculture Department did not respond to an NPR request for comment about concerns over mistrust in the program and plans to address that.

The weeks of hardship, anxiety and chaos caused by the funding pause have, however, shined a light on the importance of the program, many noted. SNAP recipients have seen an outpouring of support from people around the country and lawmakers from both major parties.

"If anything, I think that this shutdown and this disruption of SNAP benefits will make Americans more aware this is really an important program and should retain its entitlement status," said Gundersen.

Brittany Jansen, of Phoenix, hopes more people will realize hunger affects those close to them.

Jansen applied for SNAP benefits 10 months ago, after she and her partner racked up thousands of dollars in credit card debt for groceries and gasoline. He changed career paths and has yet to find a full-time job. She bartends part-time, and they split shifts because they can't afford child care for their two toddlers.

Her own mother didn't fully grasp the struggle.

"When I first told her that we were getting benefits she was confused," Jansen said, "because she was like, 'Well, you both have jobs!'"

Since the shutdown and SNAP funding pause, Jansen has been more open about the fact that her family needs help.

"And I think people are just kind of surprised," she said.

Transcript

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

The end of the nation's longest government shutdown means food assistance for 42 million people will soon be restored. But anxiety from the 12-day funding pause may stick around, as NPR's Jennifer Ludden reports.

JENNIFER LUDDEN, BYLINE: Jacqueline Giammona is a single, working mom of two boys and buys most of her groceries with SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Last weekend, she was thrilled when California, where she lives, sent out full benefits right after a court ordered the federal government to pay them.

JACQUELINE GIAMMONA: I was really relieved, but I do have something that's like, OK, what if they take it away?

LUDDEN: The Trump administration battled that order all the way to the Supreme Court. Giammona can't fathom why the government would deprive low-income people of a necessity like food and considers it an abuse of power.

GIAMMONA: People are going to distrust the government, and I think people are going to be really angry about it for a long time.

LUDDEN: SNAP serves 1 in 8 people in this country, most at or just over the poverty level. It's supposed to be there for anyone who qualifies, and it's never been disrupted before in its six-decade history, says economist Craig Gundersen at Baylor University.

CRAIG GUNDERSEN: So in that sense, this is a big surprise. It really has broken this entitlement status of SNAP, and that's of concern.

LUDDEN: The administration argued it could not use reserve funds to pay for SNAP during the shutdown. But President Trump repeatedly criticized SNAP as a, quote, "Democrat program," and Republicans have long tried to shrink it. At the White House last week, Trump falsely claimed President Biden expanded SNAP randomly.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: During Biden, they gave it to anybody that wanted it. I think it's something you have to talk about because the numbers are incredible.

LUDDEN: Crystal FitzSimons with the Food Research & Action Center says targeting SNAP was a policy choice.

CRYSTAL FITZSIMONS: It does make me nervous that this could be used as a negotiating tactic again. Once you break a taboo - right? - it's that much easier to break a taboo.

LUDDEN: The congressional deal to reopen the government funds SNAP through next September. FitzSimons would like lawmakers to make sure benefits won't ever be held up again.

FITZSIMONS: Could Congress compel USDA to actually act? They could. I'm not sure that we'll be able to get that done before October 1, 2026.

LUDDEN: The Agriculture Department did not respond to NPR's request for comment about these concerns. For all the hardship and anxiety of the past couple weeks, anti-hunger experts like Gundersen say there may be an upside.

GUNDERSEN: If anything, I think that this shutdown and this disruption of SNAP benefits will make Americans more aware this is really an important program and should retain its entitlement status.

LUDDEN: In Phoenix, Brittany Jansen agrees. I caught her at snack time for her two toddlers.

UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: Blah (ph).

BRITTANY JANSEN: Yes. Hang one second. Sorry.

LUDDEN: Jansen applied for SNAP 10 months ago after she and her partner racked up thousands in credit card debt for groceries and gasoline. He changed career paths and has yet to find a full-time job. She bartends, and they split shifts because they can't afford child care. She says even her mother was surprised they signed up for food aid.

JANSEN: I mean, when I first told her that we were getting benefits, she was confused because she was like, well, you both have jobs.

LUDDEN: Jansen hopes the more people learn about SNAP, the more it will change misperceptions about who gets it and why.

JANSEN: I think maybe everybody hopefully has somebody in their life that is affected by this, and it can, you know, kind of make it a little more personal.

LUDDEN: That's why she started talking more openly about how SNAP is helping her own family at a tough time.

Jennifer Ludden, NPR News, Washington.

CORRECTION

Nov. 13th, 2025

A previous version of this story said President Trump had falsely claimed former President Joe Biden expanded the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program by "Billions and Billions of dollars" and randomly gave benefits "to anyone for the asking, as opposed to just those in need." In fact, the Biden administration did expand SNAP by billions of dollars but did not give benefits to ineligible people.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5604788

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- U.S. bishops officially ban gender-affirming care at Catholic hospitals: 2025 Nov 13

- Catholic bishops talked about immigration and transgender care at U.S. gathering: 2025 Nov 13

RELIGION | WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2025 • 8:05 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

U.S. bishops officially ban gender-affirming care at Catholic hospitals

By The Associated Press

U.S. Catholic bishops voted Wednesday to make official a ban on gender-affirming care for transgender patients at Catholic hospitals. The step formalizes a yearslong process for the U.S. church to address transgender health care.

From a Baltimore hotel ballroom, the bishops overwhelmingly approved revisions to their ethical and religious directives that guide the nation's thousands of Catholic health care institutions and providers.

More than one in seven patients in the U.S. are treated each day at Catholic hospitals, according to the Catholic Health Association. Catholic hospitals are the only medical center in some communities.

Major medical groups and health organizations support gender-affirming care for transgender patients.

Most Catholic health care institutions have taken a conservative approach and not offered gender-affirming care, which may involve hormonal, psychological and surgical treatments. The new directives will formalize that mandate. Bishops will have autonomy in making the directives into law for their dioceses.

"With regard to the gender ideology, I think it's very important the church makes a strong statement here," said Bishop Robert Barron of Minnesota's Winona-Rochester diocese during the public discussion of the revised directives.

The Catholic Health Association thanked the bishops for incorporating much of the organization's feedback into the directives. It said in a statement, "Catholic providers will continue to welcome those who seek medical care from us and identify as transgender. We will continue to treat these individuals with dignity and respect, which is consistent with Catholic social teaching and our moral obligation to serve everyone, particularly those who are marginalized."

The new guidelines incorporate earlier documents on gender identity from the Vatican in 2024 and the U.S. bishops in 2023.

In the 2023 doctrinal note, titled "Moral Limits to the Technological Manipulation of the Human Body," the bishops specified: "Catholic health care services must not perform interventions, whether surgical or chemical, that aim to transform the sexual characteristics of a human body into those of the opposite sex, or take part in the development of such procedures."

Progressive religious voices respond

The Catholic Church is not monolithic when it comes to transgender rights. Some parishes and priests welcome trans Catholics into the fold, while others are not as accepting.

"Catholic teaching upholds the invaluable dignity of every human life, and for many trans people, gender-affirming care is what makes life livable," said Michael Sennett, a trans man who is active in his Massachusetts parish.

Sennett serves on the board of New Ways Ministry, which advocates for LGBTQ+ inclusion in the Catholic Church. In 2024, the group arranged a meeting with Pope Francis to discuss the need for gender-affirming care.

New Ways Ministry's executive director, Francis DeBernardo, said that for many transgender Catholics he knows, "the transition process was not just a biological necessity, but a spiritual imperative. That if they were going to be living as authentic people in the way that they believe God made them, then transition becomes a necessary thing."

On the same day that U.S. Catholic bishops were discussing gender identity, the heads of several major progressive religious denominations issued a statement in support of transgender, intersex and nonbinary people, at a time when many state legislatures and the Trump administration are curtailing their rights.

The 10 signers included the heads of the Unitarian Universalist Association, the Episcopal Church, the Union for Reform Judaism and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

"During a time when our country is placing their lives under increasingly serious threat, there is a disgraceful misconception that all people of faith do not affirm the full spectrum of gender – a great many of us do. Let it be known instead that our beloveds are created in the image of God – Holy and whole," the religious leaders said in a statement.

U.S. bishops united in their concern for immigrants

The Catholic bishops, wrapping up their conference in Baltimore, overwhelmingly approved a "special message" on immigration Wednesday. Such pastoral statements are rare; the last was in 2013 in response to the Obama administration's mandate for insurers to provide contraception coverage.

Catholic leaders individually have criticized the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. Fear of immigration enforcement has suppressed Mass attendance at some parishes. Local clerics are fighting to administer sacraments to detained immigrants.

"We are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement," the bishops' statement reads. "We are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants. We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care."

In a show of unity, multiple bishops stood up to speak in favor of the statement during the final afternoon discussion, including Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul Coakley, the newly elected president of the conference.

"I'm strongly in support of it for the good of our immigrant brothers and sisters, but also to find a nice balance," Coakley said, noting that they call "upon our lawmakers and our administration to offer us a meaningful path of reform of our immigration system."

Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich walked to the microphone to recommend stronger language around mass deportation. "That seems to be the central issue we are facing with our people at this time," he said.

His brother bishops agreed. The updated text now states that U.S. Catholic bishops "oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people."

Full article: https://www.npr.org/g-s1-97651

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RELIGION | THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2025 • 5:31 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Catholic bishops talked about immigration and transgender care at U.S. gathering

By Jason DeRose

Heard on All Things Considered

Transcript

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

U.S. Catholic bishops took on two hot-button issues this week at their meeting in Baltimore - immigration enforcement and gender-affirming care for transgender people. Here to talk about what went on is NPR religion correspondent Jason DeRose. Hi, Jason.

JASON DEROSE, BYLINE: Hello.

DETROW: Let's start with immigration. What did the bishops say?

DEROSE: Well, they approved a statement that reads, in part, quote, "we are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement." But it goes on to say, quote, "we recognize that nations have a responsibility to regulate borders and establish a just and orderly immigration system for the sake of the common good." Now, at one point, Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago argued for even stronger language.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

BLASE CUPICH: Should we not say that we oppose the indiscriminate deportation of people which is taking place today? I think that's a central issue.

DEROSE: And, Scott, that language was added. You know, 3 in 10 Catholics in the U.S. are immigrants, according to Pew Research, so this is a crucial issue for the church here. And our reporting has shown that attendance is down at some predominantly Latino congregations around the U.S. because of fears of immigration actions.

DETROW: Now, there had been a lot of hope from some quarters that the bishops would go further, they would say more, right?

DEROSE: Right. Statements like this are fairly rare, so when they happen, people know it's serious - right? - and since the last time they made one of these was a dozen years ago to criticize some provisions of the Affordable Care Act. So having said that, at least one bishop at the meeting said this statement on immigration didn't go far enough. And perhaps more importantly, Pope Leo had asked bishops to speak out clearly and strongly. Last week, Leo himself spoke to reporters outside Rome and said he was deeply concerned about the treatment of immigrants in the U.S., especially that some were being denied the Eucharist.

DETROW: Let's talk about another topic. What actions did the Catholic bishops take regarding treatment for transgender people at Catholic hospitals?

DEROSE: Well, they're officially barring those hospitals run by the church from providing gender-affirming care for trans people, such as hormone treatment or surgeries. Here's Bishop Robert Barron from Minnesota speaking during the meeting, describing a conversation he had with the late Pope Francis on the topic.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

ROBERT BARRON: As we were ending a three-hour discussion with him, he specifically said to us, I want you to fight gender ideology, which is repugnant to the Bible and to our tradition.

DEROSE: Now, these new rules also say Catholic hospitals can't refer trans people elsewhere for care, and that's similar to how these hospitals also deal with contraception and abortion care, for example. Now, this directive from the Catholic bishops comes as other religious leaders are publicly expressing their support for trans people. Just yesterday, the leaders of a number of denominations, including Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Reform Jews, put out a statement that said, quote, "our faiths call on us to proclaim that transgender, intersex and nonbinary people deserve respect, love and equal rights."

DETROW: How do these actions and statements by the bishops square with the beliefs of everyday Catholics?

DEROSE: Well, you know, there's a clear disconnect between what the church and the bishops teach and what Catholics actually believe and do. Polling shows, for instance, that majorities of Catholics favor contraception from some form of birth control, abortion rights and LGBTQ rights. But it's not just a disconnect with people in the pews. It's also a disconnect with the pope. Pope Leo asked bishops to speak out strongly on immigration. Instead, they took a more pastoral approach, I might say, expressing their concern for their flock rather than what might be called a prophetic approach, calling for change.

Now, at the same time, they elected a new conference president this week and went with a clear conservative, Archbishop Paul Coakley from Oklahoma City. He beat out another bishop from a diocese on the U.S. southern border, Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, Texas. However, Flores was elected vice president of the conference, which some Catholics who care about - a lot about - immigration see as a sign of hope.

DETROW: That is NPR religion correspondent Jason DeRose. Jason, thanks so much.

DEROSE: You're welcome.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5606979

Table of Contents

National Public Radio: 2025 Nov 14

National

The Trump administration plans major cuts to long-term housing for homelessness: 2025 Nov 14

She criticized President Trump during the shutdown. Now she's been put on leave: 2025 Nov 14

Trump to address the affordability issue. And, Border Patrol heading to Charlotte: 2025 Nov 14

World

Russia's massive attack on Kyiv kills at least 4 people, injures dozens of others: 2025 Nov 14

A decade after the Bataclan attacks, France is still grappling with how to remember: 2025 Nov 13

Israel deported Palestinian prisoners to Egypt. Some Israelis question the practice: 2025 Nov 13

Tatsuya Nakadai, an icon of Japanese cinema, has died at 92: 2025 Nov 12

Israel's president says 'shocking' settler violence against Palestinians must end: 2025 Nov 12

U.S. troops ramp their presence in Central and South America as President Maduro mobilizes forces: 2025 Nov 12

Greetings from the Arctic Circle, where an icebreaker ship drew polar bears' attention: 2025 Nov 12

Law

James Comey and Letitia James argue DOJ prosecutor was illegally appointed: 2025 Nov 13

Politics

Economic promises helped Trump get elected. Now he has an affordability problem: 2025 Nov 14

Comey and James seek case dismissal, arguing prosecutor was illegally appointed: 2025 Nov 14

The House is back. How do members feel?: 2025 Nov 13

'We were gone far too long.' House members reflect on longest shutdown: 2025 Nov 13

The government shutdown is over, but not everything is back to normal: 2025 Nov 13

Health

Federal special education staff may get their jobs back. But for how long?: 2025 Nov 13

If you're going to be kind to another human, today is the day to do it!: 2025 Nov 13

New malaria drug could be a life-saver as the standard drug shows signs of weakness: 2025 Nov 12

Science

This week in science: A Saturn moon's ocean, chameleon eyes and energy used for AI: 2025 Nov 13

Why home insurance is unaffordable, even in places without wildfires or hurricanes: 2025 Nov 13

PBS documentary looks at 25 years of the challenges of surviving in space on the ISS: 2025 Nov 12

Education

Are college students getting too many A's?: 2025 Nov 13

For students who rely on SNAP, school food pantries offer some relief: 2025 Nov 12

Culture

'Sirāt' is a desert survival story — and one of the year's most gripping films: 2025 Nov 14

Dear Life Kit: I'm tall. How do I politely ask people to stop bringing it up?: 2025 Nov 14

Disney eyes a future where users help shape the story: 2025 Nov 13

'Thrilled to be open': Smithsonian and other museums welcome visitors back: 2025 Nov 13

'Blue Moon' pushed Ethan Hawke to his limit: 'That's a thrilling spot to be in': 2025 Nov 13

Cast your vote for NPR's Pod Club Awards!: 2025 Nov 13

SNAP funding pause to soon end, but anxiety and anger may linger: 2025 Nov 13

Trans

U.S. bishops officially ban gender-affirming care at Catholic hospitals: 2025 Nov 13

Catholic bishops talked about immigration and transgender care at U.S. gathering: 2025 Nov 13