NPR News Now - NPR News: 01-19-2025 9PM EST

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

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For every headline, there's also another story about the people living those headlines. On weekdays, Up First brings you the day's biggest news. On Sundays, we bring you closer with a single story about the people, places, and moments reshaping our world. Your news made personal every Sunday on the Up First podcast from N Herbst Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Janine Herbst. Around 90 Palestinian prisoners and detainees were released from Israeli jails and into the occupied West Bank. They were released in exchange for three Israeli hostages held in Gaza as part of the ceasefire deal that went into effect this morning. NPR's

Kat Lonsdorf has more from Ramallah. Hundreds of Palestinians gathered at a traffic roundabout in Ramallah suburb where detainees were set to be released. The mood was celebratory. Families bundled up in winter coats, waving Palestinian flags and vendors selling sweets and balloons. The crowd waited in the cold for hours long into the night when finally buses pulled up and the detainees got out. Several young men, still wearing what appeared to be Israeli prison uniforms, were hoisted onto other men's shoulders.

Onlookers chanted, God is great, greeting them. This was the first of several hostage and detainee exchanges set to take place during an expected six-week ceasefire in Gaza. Negotiations to extend the deal should begin in coming weeks. Kat Lonsdorf, NPR News, Ramallah. President-elect Trump's narrowest margin of victory in November was in the swing state of Wisconsin. Mayan Silver of member station WUWM spoke with voters in Waukesha County about how they're feeling as Trump prepares to take office tomorrow.

And a brewery in the Milwaukee suburb, Pat Walsh says he's looking forward to watching the inauguration. The retiree from the transportation industry says he wants Trump to move forward on his promises to close the border, curb inflation and revamp the Justice Department. This time, eyes are wide open and his picks are showing. But Gene Simasik doesn't like Trump's threats to fire large numbers of civil servants. Because once you dismantle all this stuff, it's really hard to put things together again. Trump is planning a flurry of executive orders in his first days as president and everything

from immigration to trade. For NPR News, I'm Ayaan Silver in Waukesha. TikTok is back online today for U.S. users after Donald Trump said he would protect service providers who assist the Chinese owned app. On a social media site, Trump said he would issue an executive order tomorrow to extend the amount of time before the law's provisions take effect. And he says there will be no liability for any company that helps TikTok. Trump mentioned the app at his final rally in D.C. tonight before being inaugurated tomorrow. And as of today, TikTok is back. Congress passed a law last year telling the video apps owner ByteDance to sell to a U.S. company or shut down. The Supreme Court upheld that law, but the app's future remains uncertain.

You're listening to NPR News from Washington. With President Biden on his way out of office, NPR's Corey Turner asked more than a dozen educators, researchers, advocates, and experts on how they would grade his job on education. Here's what he heard. On the K-12 side, my bipartisan panel thought Team Biden did pretty well. With a lot of support for the $120 billion he pushed to send schools to help with COVID-19 recovery. Research shows the money did help students

regain some ground. On higher ed, the troubled rollout of the FAFSA was like that big test question you blank on and it tanks your whole grade. There were also mixed reviews for Biden's efforts to cancel student loans. Conservatives were scathing while the rest were split. Some cheered the fact that Biden did forgive the debts of 5 million borrowers, while many worried it distracted the Ed Department from other priorities.

On average, the panel gave Biden a pretty average C. Corey Turner, NPR News. In Georgia, all commercial poultry operations in a six-mile radius are under quarantine. The plants will have to undergo surveillance testing for the next couple of weeks after the state confirmed a positive case of bird flu at a poultry facility in Elber County. That's about two hours outside of Atlanta. Georgia is the country's top state for chicken production. Teams are now working to clean and disinfect the facility that has around 45,000 chickens. The virus has been found four times in Georgia, but only in backyard flocks. Around the country, the virus has been detected in 84 commercial and backyard flocks just in the last month. NPR News from Washington.