NPR News Now - NPR News: 01-28-2025 2AM EST

Episode Date: January 28, 2025

NPR News: 01-28-2025 2AM ESTLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Are you the greatest musician the world has never heard? Unsigned artists, now's your opportunity to play the Tiny Desk. Enter the 2025 Tiny Desk Contest, our nationwide search for the next undiscovered star. The winner will play a Tiny Desk concert and a U.S. tour. To learn more, visit npr.org slash tiny desk contest. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Shae Stevens. The Trump administration says it's placed a number of senior career officials at the U.S. agency for international development on leave.

Those workers are accused of not abiding by President Trump's executive order to freeze foreign assistance. NPR's global health correspondent, Fattma Tanis, has more. In a message sent to USAID staff and obtained by NPR, the acting administrator, Jason Gray, wrote that they had, quote, identified several actions within USAID that appear to be designed to circumvent the president's executive order and the mandate from the American people. The note said that a number of USAID employees had been placed on administrative leave until an analysis of those actions was completed. Speaking on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution,

an agency staff member told NPR that, quote, it's shocking. They said, to their knowledge, the stop work order had been closely followed. The memo did not say how many people were placed on leave. Fatma Tanis, NPR News. Google Maps users in the United States may soon notice a name change. Google says it will rename the Gulf of Mexico

in line with one of President Trump's executive actions. Details from NPR's Giles Snyder. Google says in a post on X that it has a long-standing practice of applying name changes when they've been updated in official government sources. Once that happens, Google says U.S. users of Google Maps will see Gulf of America. Google says the name will remain Gulf of Mexico for Maps users in Mexico, and users elsewhere will see both. The name change was among the slew of executive actions President Trump signed shortly after he took office last week.

Among them is a directive to restore former President William McKinley's name to North America's highest peak in Alaska. The Obama administration changed it to Denali in 2015. Google says it will make the change back to Mount McKinley. Trial Snider, NPR News. The Trump administration's immigration crackdown is now in full swing, with hundreds of raids in several cities reported Monday.

U.S. Border Czar Tom Holman says virtually all of the individuals rounded up on Sunday were accused of committing crimes, but admits there has been some collateral damage. Well, in sanctuary cities, you're going to see a higher number of collateral arrests. I mean, we're going to have more criminals, but there's going to be a big number of what we call collateral, because when we're forcing them to the neighborhood to find the bad guy, he's probably going to be with others. And we're not going to instruct ICE agents to ignore their oath, ignore the law. If they're here illegally, they're going to go to jail, too.

Homan says the arrests are more difficult in larger metropolitan areas because undocumented residents are being instructed on how to avoid immigration agents. Meanwhile, television personality Dr. Phil was on hand during an arrest Monday in Chicago. This is NPR News. A federal agent has removed the travel restrictions on Stewart Roads. The founder of the far-right Oath Keepers Roads and several co-defendants were barred from the U.S. Capitol after President Trump commuted their sentences for a seditious conspiracy. They were convicted for their roles in the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

A group of workers at Whole Foods in Philadelphia has voted to join the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. The vote was 130 to 100, or 57 percent, in favor. Whole Foods has expressed disappointment over the action, while pro-union workers say they hope the move will lead to higher wages and other benefits. Climate change has boosted the number of days that temperatures are dangerously hot, while also trimming the number of dangerously cold days. As NPR's Alejandra Burunda reports, a new study focused on Europe suggests human-driven

climate change will soon alter the global balance of those risks. Humans are sensitive to temperature. When it gets too hot, people die not just from heat stroke, but from all kinds of other medical problems like heart attacks or even mental health issues. But people also die when it gets really cold. And in many parts of the world, cold causes more deaths than heat. That balance could change in coming decades, at least in Europe, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Medicine, because climate change is likely to balloon the risks of heat.

The scientists write it's a warning to cut greenhouse gas emissions quickly to keep climate change from getting even more dangerous. Alejandro Runda, NPR News. Asia-Pacific market shares are mixed down 1% in Tokyo. This is NPR. Technologist Pau Garcia is using AI to create photos of people's most precious memories. How her mother was dressed, the haircut that she remembered, regenerated tens of images and then she saw two images that was like, that was it. Ideas about the future of memory. That's on the TED Radio Hour podcast from NPR.