Month: June 2023

Made in America. It may be a catchy political slogan, but it’s a lot more complicated than it sounds. So many things we use everyday come from China. In 2018 – former President Donald Trump launched a trade war with the country, eventually slapping tariffs on more than 300 billion dollars worth of Chinese imports. Two and half years into the Biden presidency – those taxes are still here.

To understand why, NPR’s White House correspondent Asma Khalid spoke with policy makers, economists and even went out to a factory floor in Minnesota.

It depends on when, and where you grew up, but you can probably name a few of your favorite sit-com dads – from Mike Brady and his “bunch”, to Homer Simpson, to Andre Johnson from Blackish.

There is no single, universal way to be a father. There are as many ways to be a dad as there are dads.

This year, for Father’s Day, we asked a variety of different dads to tell us their stories about what fatherhood means to them.

And we have a story that puts a new twist on the old saying “like father, like son”.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

A deadly and addictive chemical normally used as a horse tranquilizer is being mixed into illegal drugs.

Xylazine has been around for a while, but over the last year authorities have been seeing it turn up in higher quantities all over the country.

In recent weeks, U.S. Drug Czar Rahul Gupta has been sounding the alarm, even acknowledging public health experts and police are mostly in the dark about how Xylazine took hold so quickly.

NPR’s Juana Summers speaks with addiction correspondent Brian Mann, who has been reporting on the mysterious and deadly emergence of the drug.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

When Kim Hyun-woo stepped into the NPR studios in Washington, he was doing something that in his past life would have gotten him killed – speaking frankly with an American journalist.

That’s because Mr. Kim spent 17 years working for North Korean intelligence at the Ministry of State Security.

He defected in 2014 and lives today in South Korea.

In a rare glimpse behind the curtain of one of the most isolated countries in the world, he shared his thoughts on pathways to diplomacy between Washington and Pyongyang, possible successors to Kim Jong Un and his fears for loved ones who remain in North Korea.

Kim Hyun-woo spoke with NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly in an exclusive interview.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

On Tuesday, former president Donald Trump appeared in a federal courthouse in Miami where he pleaded not guilty to 37 criminal charges, including obstruction and unlawful retention of classified documents at his Florida home and private resort Mar-a-Lago.

He is the first former U.S. president to face federal criminal charges. Trump and many of his supporters have called the indictment politically motivated.

NPR’s White House correspondent Franco Ordonez has been following Trump’s case and he spoke to Ailsa Chang about how Trump, as well as his opponents in the Republican primary are reacting to the indictment on the campaign trail.

Ailsa Chang spoke with NPR’s Andrea Bernstein about why Trump sees so many lawyers come and go.

The U.S. is in the midst of a drug crisis, with opioid overdose deaths climbing to epidemic proportions.

And overdose deaths among young people, between the ages of 10 and 19, have been on the rise with sharp increases in recent years.

Across the country, cities and states are looking for strategies to help kids survive the opioid crisis.

At a school in Virginia, students are learning how to obtain and use the lifesaving overdose reversal nasal spray Narcan that was recently made available for sale over the counter.

And in California, where fentanyl is the cause of 1 in 5 deaths among youths, a pending bill could allow younger teens to seek drug treatment without parental consent.

For more than a year the PGA, the world’s leading pro golf league, has basically been at war with the upstart Saudi-funded LIV Golf league. Lawsuits and countersuits were filed as the the leagues competed for marquee golfers and control of the narrative around the game. Some PGA players resisted big paydays to join LIV because they were critical of the Saudi Public Investment Fund, the source of the league’s seemingly endless supply of money. But last week, the two leagues announced a plan to join forces.

Though the deal has yet to be finalized, it’s already faced backlash from players who remain loyal to the tour, and from human rights activists who see this as an attempt by the Saudi government to use sports to draw attention away from their record of human rights abuses.

NPR’s Susan Davis speaks with Sally Jenkins, a sports columnist for the Washington Post, who wrote a column critical of the merger, and Terry Strada, who chairs the group 9/11 Families United, which represents thousands of surviving family members of those killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks. Strada has been one of the most vocal critics of the plan.

We also hear from Doug Greenberg, a writer for the sports news site Front Office Sports, who says the Saudi-backed league has actually been good for golf.

Federal Indian boarding schools left a decades long legacy of abuse, neglect and forced assimilation of Indigenous children.

Last year, when the federal government finally acknowledged its role — that painful history drew attention to a few schools that remain open.

NPR’s Sequoia Carrillo and KOSU’s Allison Herrera visited Riverside Indian School in southwest Oklahoma to find out how a school that once stripped children of their Native identity now helps strengthen it.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

Every year about 600,000 thousand people are reported missing in the United States per the National Missing and Unidentified Persons database.

In 2022, about 34,000 people reported as actively missing were people of color. But people of color who disappear seldom get the same amount of media attention devoted to white people who go missing – especially white women and children.

The late journalist Gwen Ifill coined the phrase “Missing White Woman Syndrome” to describe the media’s fascination with, and detailed coverage of, the cases of missing or endangered white women – compared to the seeming disinterest in covering the disappearances of people of color.

NPR’s Juana Summers speaks with David Robinson II. His son, Daniel Robinson, has been missing for nearly two years. And Natalie Wilson, co-founder of the Black and Missing Foundation, who has been helping him find answers.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

Being Black and an immigrant is an increasingly common phenomenon in the South, where 1 in 10 Black people are immigrants.

Still, despite growing numbers of Black immigrants in the region, their experience is fraught with worries over discrimination and assimilation.

NPR’s Leah Donnella reports on hurdles Black immigrants face in order to drive in Tennessee, a state with one of the fastest growing populations of Black immigrants in the South, and with few options for transportation.