Year: 2025

Whether a “chainsaw,” per Elon Musk, or “scalpel,” as President Trump has said — the Trump administration is making deep cuts to the federal government within its first 100 days.

And Trump has appointed personal allies with little experience in government to key cabinet positions.

For the civil servants working to enact the missions of these government agencies, that’s often meant another word: “chaos.”

NPR correspondents Tom Bowman, Michele Kelemen and Selena Simmons-Duffin recap what they are hearing from federal workers at the Departments of Defense, State, and Health and Human Services.

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When you think of a successful protest movement, most Americans probably think of the American Civil Rights movement, and the March on Washington in 1963.

Martin Luther King, Jr. standing behind a podium on the steps of the Lincoln memorial delivered his most famous speech and a line that would come to define the goals of the Civil Rights Movement.

President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act just nine months after the March. A year after that Johnson signed the National Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The quest for equality continues. In the decades since that bright summer day in August 1963, many other Americans have tried to use the model of protest to achieve their political goals.

But do protests work?

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On March 23, the death toll in Gaza surpassed 50,000 people killed by Israeli fire in the war with Hamas.

This is the story of 15 people who were killed the same day.

There were airstrikes across the territory, and in the south Israeli troops opened fire on a crew of emergency workers in ambulances and a firetruck.

At first, the Israeli military said the vehicles were “advancing suspiciously” toward troops, “without headlights or emergency signals.” It said the soldiers had eliminated a number of Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants.

A recording unearthed days later told a different story ultimately leading the Israel to conduct an investigation. The results blamed an “operational misunderstanding” and cite professional failures.

In more than 18 months of war – it’s been rare for the Israeli Military to acknowledge failure.

Coming up the story of what happened.

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What does it take to keep the economy stable?

That is a question that Jerome Powell considers every day in his role as Chair of the Federal Reserve. It’s also a role that is meant to be done independent of politics.

However, Powell’s name has been making headlines, following a series of comments made by President Trump attacking Powell, after he warned that the President’s aggressive tariff policies could hurt the economy.

President Trump has been threatening to fire Powell, something he backed away from Tuesday afternoon.

As NPR’s Scott Horsley reports, all this is further rattling financial markets, making Jerome Powell’s task of keeping the economy stable even harder to do.

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On Monday morning in Rome Cardinal Kevin Farrell Camerlengo or Cardinal Chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church announced the death of Pope Francis I.

That was followed some 17 hours later by the rite of ascertainment. A formal acknowledgement of Francis’ death…and the transfer of his body to his coffin.

And it’s one a few of the many centuries-old rituals that will play out over the next several days as the church mourns Pope Francis.

There will be the mourning of the faithful as Francis’ body lies in St. Peter’s Basilica. A funeral, where Francis will be remembered by his fellow priests, followers and world leaders. Then, the Conclave where the College of Cardinals will meet to choose his successor.

Pope Francis has died at 88. Now the church has to chart a course without his leadership. Who will be his successor, and what path will he choose?

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Viktor Orban is in his fourth consecutive term as Prime Minister of Hungary. In that time, he has dismantled democratic checks and balances, taken control of the country’s media, civil society and universities, and consolidated power in him and his Fidesz party.

NPR’s Rob Schmitz looks at how Orban’s step-by-step dismantling of Hungary’s democracy has become a point of fascination for political scientists around the world, including those advising the Trump administration.

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This week, two federal judges handling separate immigration cases escalated their attempts to get the Trump administration to comply with court orders.

One case involves President Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act, the 18th-century wartime law, to deport migrants without due process.

The other is about the wrongful deportation, also without due process, of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and the government’s refusal to bring him back to the U.S.

The growing conflicts point to a potential constitutional crisis, where the president openly defies the country’s highest court — or at least, as one legal scholar maintains, a crisis at the Supreme Court.

Our guest is University of Virginia professor Amanda Frost, who specializes in immigration and citizenship law.

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When it comes to the cost of raising a child from infancy to the age of 17 in the United States – it’s hard to settle on a precise figure.

There’s one thing we do know – it’s going to be expensive.

By some estimates, raising a kid, who was born in 2015, could cost a middle class family close to $320,000 over 17 years.

That money goes to childcare, healthcare, food, clothes, education, transportation, activities, toys, and a lot more. All of those things will be affected – one way or another – by the Trump administration’s tariff policy.

And the companies that sell products geared at those raising kids – they’re going to feel the pinch as well. One CEO argues it could even mean certain products will become unavailable.

Being a parent in the U.S. is already expensive. Slapping tariffs on the products kids use could make it more so.

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The Trump administration’s move to send immigrants to a maximum security prison in El Salvador is the subject of multiple on-going fights in court.

But in an Oval Office meeting with the Salvadoran president this week, President Trump was already looking ahead.

“We also have homegrown criminals that push people into subways, that hit elderly ladies on the back of the head with a baseball bat when they’re not looking, that are absolute monsters. I’d like to include them in the group of people to get them out of the country,” Trump said.

Trump later clarified that by “homegrown criminals” he meant U.S. citizens.

No president has tried to do exactly what Trump is proposing.

In this episode, we hear from someone who argues it’s wildly unconstitutional.

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President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency team, or DOGE, appears to be grabbing sensitive data from all over the government.

A whistleblower has come forward by filing an official disclosure to Congress about concerning activity on the systems at one independent federal agency, the National Labor Relations Board.

Elon Musk says DOGE is searching for savings throughout the government. But is the data being accessed valuable?

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