NPR News Now - NPR News: 01-27-2025 6PM EST

Episode Date: January 27, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Jack Spear. Federal agents continue expanding their deportation operations as they move to fulfill President Trump's promises on illegal immigration, carrying out raids across the country. Resistance by immigrant rights groups is also growing as we hear from NPR's Adrian Florido. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and partner agencies have reported raids to pick up hundreds of immigrants in Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, San Diego, Miami, and many other cities. ICE says it's targeting potentially dangerous criminal aliens.

Its press releases highlight arrests of people convicted or wanted for crimes like extortion, homicide, domestic violence, and narcotics violations. But advocates say it's also getting people who pose no threat. In Atlanta, activists reported immigrants with pending asylum claims were rounded up. In Puerto Rico, the ACLU said ICE had detained people with legal status and no criminal history. Advocates have filed a raft of lawsuits to try to slow the deportation dragnet. and Dragnet. Adrienne Floodido, NPR News, Los Angeles. The acting U.S. Attorney General is moving to dismiss several prosecutors who investigated Donald Trump. MPR's Kerry Johnson reports on upheaval inside the Justice Department. More than a dozen Justice Department officials who worked alongside Special Counsel Jack

Smith have received firing notices, according to two sources inside the building. Acting Attorney General James McHenry wrote they could not be trusted in quote, faithfully implementing the president's agenda. The termination letters were first reported by Fox News. Trump campaigned on a promise of retribution and his appointees to lead the DOJ and the FBI have talked about wanting to investigate the investigators. Jack Smith resigned before he could be fired, as did another senior national security lawyer, but many more career prosecutors and agents on his team remained on the job. Both cases against Trump were dropped after he won last year's

election. Carrie Johnson, NPR News, Washington. A number of Jewish groups say they will stop actively posting on the social media platform X. NPR's Jason DeRose reports the move comes because they see the platform as filled with what they call toxic speech. In a statement, more than a dozen Jewish organizations say that X has become a platform that promotes hate, anti-Semitism, and societal division. They plan to stop engagement on X within the next several months. Among the groups, the Union for Reform Judaism, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Central Conference of Cantors, and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.

They cite reduced content moderation and X owner Elon Musk's own posts. The groups say rather than contribute to the coarsening of discourse that is so pervasive on X, they'll post content elsewhere. Jason DeRose, NPR News. Shares of some of Wall Street's loftiest AI stocks took a tumble to the mid-word of a new China AI learning model that is less expensive than NASDAQ, but more than 600 points. This is NPR. The National Science Foundation has canceled meetings to review pending research grant

applications. CNPR's Jonathan Lambert reports to the PAWS as a response to the Trump administration's executive orders. The National Science Foundation, which has a budget of around $9 billion, funds a wide range of scientific research through grants to research institutions. Over 60 grant review panels scheduled for this week were all canceled on Monday. The pause was to ensure compliance with recent executive orders from the Trump administration, the agency said in a statement to NPR. It's unclear how long the pause could

last. The delays come a week after similar pauses at the National Institutes of Health. Researchers say the uncertainty caused by the pauses could slow down scientific research. Jonathan Lambert, NPR News. Tech investor and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman is joining forces with cancer researchers, including a Columbia University professor, to use artificial intelligence to boost research on breast cancer, prostate cancer, and lymphomas, before eventually broadening their scope of work to deal with other illnesses. Hoffman led the funding round along with a venture capital firm to launch the $24.6 million startup named Manus AI. Medical research and drug discovery are becoming an increasingly

important part of AI research, receiving several billion dollars in funding last year. Critical futures prices took a drop today. Oil has been trending lower amid worries about tariffs and other economic developments. We're landing the session down $1.49 a barrel to settle at $73.17 a barrel in New York. I'm Jack Spear, NPR News in Washington.