Year: 2025

Earlier this week, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy testified on Capitol Hill, where he thanked Congress for recently approving $12.5 billion dollars to modernize the nation’s aging air traffic control system.

But some U.S. air traffic controllers say there’s a much deeper problem: a nationwide staffing shortage that leaves controllers overworked and employee morale low.

NPR’s Joel Rose and Joe Hernandez spoke with five current and former air traffic controllers to find out what improvements they want to see.

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It’s been over three months since President Trump announced very big across-the-board tariffs on imports from nearly every territory on Earth–including uninhabited islands. It’s a move he said would revitalize the U.S. economy.

Since that splashy White House announcement, the tariff rates have been a wildly moving target. Ratcheted up – then back down – on China, specifically.

Overlaid with global product-specific tariffs on categories like automobiles and copper. Partially paused after the stock market tanked.

Through it all, the tariff rate has remained at or well-above 10 percent on nearly every good imported to the U.S.

And if you’ve listened to NPR’s reporting since April, you’ll have heard many voices make one particular prediction over and over again – that American consumers will pay the price.

If American consumers are going to pay for the tariffs, the question is: when ?

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It’s not just Texas. In the past couple of weeks, communities all around the country have been hit with torrential rains and deadly flash flooding. Extreme weather events like this are expected to become more common as the planet heats up.

As climate change increases flash flooding risks, our infrastructure is struggling to keep up. But improvements to that infrastructure will cost billions.

NPR’s Michael Copley explains how a changing climate drives flooding and how communities and individuals can prepare.

And NPR’s Laura Sullivan reports on how flood maps from the Federal Emergency Management Agency didn’t capture the true risks at Camp Mystic, which was devastated by the Texas flooding.

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President Trump has made some big shifts in U.S. policy on Russia’s war with Ukraine lately.

In the course of two weeks, Trump halted and reinstated weapons to Ukraine and he began openly showing frustration with Russian president Vladimir Putin’s continued military escalations.

Now, Trump has announced a deal with NATO to try to pressure Russia toward a ceasefire deal in just 50 days by threatening stiff tariffs and increased military aid to Ukraine.

President Trump seems to be taking a tougher stance against Russia, but will it make a difference, and will it last?

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It’s been a year since the assassination attempt on President Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania and the motivations of the shooter are still unclear.

The US Capitol Police threat assessment cases have risen for the second year in a row, with the total number more than doubling since 2017.

At times political violence is starting to feel as pervasive as school shootings. But what do we know about what’s driving this anger?

NPR’s Scott Detrow speaks with Katherine Keneally, from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, about her threat analysis research and recommendations for countering a rise in political violence.

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On July 2nd, Sean Combs was acquitted of the most serious charges he faced: racketeering and sex trafficking. He was found guilty on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution — and he remains in prison awaiting sentencing in early October.

Over the course of eight weeks, the trial became a spectacle, even by the high standards of celebrity courtroom dramas. One reason? All of the influencers.

For our weekly Reporter’s Notebook series we bring you the the view from inside the courthouse as the Diddy spectacle unfolded.

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All across the U.S., there are aging oil and natural gas wells no longer in use.

A lot of them don’t have anyone on the hook to seal them up. Some estimate over a million such “orphan wells” still exist.

Because they haven’t been plugged, they’re still leaking greenhouse gases and other chemicals into the atmosphere and into the land around them.

What would it take to plug them — or even just one of them?

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Israel bans international journalists from independent access to Gaza. But NPR’s Anas Baba is from Gaza, and in the 21 months he has been reporting on the war, he’s also been living it. Over the course of the war, he has lost a third of his body weight, and until his food supplies ran out several weeks ago, he was getting by on just one small meal a day.

Israel still tightly restricts the entry of food into Gaza. The food it does allow in is mostly distributed through new sites run by private American contractors with a group called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. GHF operates under protection from the Israeli military, and the U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said this new system “is killing people.”

According to health officials and international medical teams in Gaza, hundreds of people have been killed by Israeli troops as they approach these food sites. U.S. officials have accused American media of spreading Hamas misinformation.

In this episode, Anas Baba takes us on the perilous journey he made to one of these new GHF distribution sites, in an attempt to secure food.

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It’s been nearly a week since devastating flooding tore through Kerr County, Texas killing more than a hundred people.

Now, after unimaginable tragedy, residents are coming together to help each other move forward.

NPR’s Juana Summers and producers Erika Ryan and Tyler Bartlam visited the City West Church, which has transformed from a house of worship into a pop up food distribution site serving thousands of meals to the community and first responders.

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The total fertility rate is a small number with big consequences.

It measures how many babies, on average, each woman will have over her lifetime. And for a population to remain stable – flat, no growth, no decline – women, on average, have to have 2.1 kids.

In the U.S., that number is 1.6, and dropping. It’s driving a new political debate about what – if anything – can be done about it.

The thing is, beneath that demographic data point are millions of families making intimate decisions about kids. NPR’s Sarah McCammon and Brian Mann dug into the politics and personal stories behind America’s shrinking birthrate.

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