NPR News Now - NPR News: 01-29-2025 8PM EST

Episode Date: January 30, 2025

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This is Eric Glass. In this American life, sometimes we just show up somewhere, turn on our tape recorders, and see what happens. If you can't get seven cars in 12 days, you gotta look yourself in the mirror and say, holy, what are you kidding me? Like this car dealership trying to sell its monthly quota of cars, and it is not going well. I just don't want one balloon to a car. Balloon the whole freaking place so it looks like I'm circus. Real life stories every week. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Jack Spear. President Donald Trump's

pick to be Health and Human Services Secretary was on Capitol Hill today for the start of his confirmation hearings. Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee seemingly largely supportive of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. while Democrats posed tough questions about his past disavowals of vaccines. Here's NPR's Lexi Schepitl. Throughout the three and a half hour hearing, Kennedy sought to assure Democratic senators that he supports vaccines and would not discourage their use as HHS secretary. The Democrats repeatedly confronted Kennedy with his past statements calling vaccines unsafe and ineffective.

Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse told Kennedy he needs to dig out of a pretty deep hole. We've just had a measles case in Rhode Island, the first since 2013. And frankly, you frighten people. Kennedy has pushed misleading claims about vaccines for decades, including as the chair of an anti-vaccine nonprofit.

Lexi Schepitl, NPR News, The Capitol. President Trump has signed a sweeping executive action that aims to expand school choice. It would free up federal money for families to use toward private schools, NPR's Janaka Mehta reports. The executive order is wide-reaching and involves several government agencies. It directs the Department of Education

to prioritize school choice programs through discretionary grants. The Ed Department and the Department of Health and Human Services have been asked to issue guidance to states about how they can use federal dollars for private schools. And Trump directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to come up with a plan for how military families could use money from the Department of Defense to send their kids to a school of their choosing. Ed Choice, a group that advocates

for school choice, celebrated the move, while the National Education Association, one of the country's largest teachers unions, says it's an overreach to, quote, steal money from public school students to fund private school vouchers. Janaki Mehta and Peer News. Steve McLaughlin, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The

Washington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Post, The President Trump speaking on the campaign trail last year talked about imposing up to 60 percent tariffs against Chinese goods, threatening to renew a trade war. Trump has not indicated exactly what level of tariffs might be levied against China though. The Federal Reserve has wrapped up its two-day meeting in Washington, opting to stand pat on short-term interest rates. The central bank citing the fact it cut rates three times last year and therefore can afford to take a go slow approach now. Fed Chair Jerome Powell in his end of meeting statement said the Fed is well positioned

whichever direction the economy heads going forward. If the economy remains strong and inflation does not continue to move sustainably toward 2 percent, we can maintain policy restraint for longer. If the labor market were to weaken unexpectedly or inflation were to fall more quickly than anticipated we can ease policy accordingly. While the Fed said inflation remains somewhat elevated, it also said the labor market is solid and it will continue to monitor developments. Stocks lost ground on Wall Street following the Fed's announcement the Dow was down 136 points, the Nasdaq down more than 100.

This is NPR. In a desert 90 miles from the glitz of Las Vegas, there exists one of the world's most top-secret nuclear weapons labs. NPR's Jeff Bromfield has been granted extraordinary access to it and brings us a report on how things there might change under the Trump administration. In Nevada, nearly 1,000 feet underground is a network of tunnels where American scientists study nuclear weapons. David Funk is one of them. He says these shafts were dug for underground nuclear testing.

Yeah, this was a designed to be a nuclear test location originally, and now we do only subcritical experiments in this location. Subcritical experiments test the plutonium and nuclear bombs without setting them off. It's the way America has done it for more than 30 years, but some fear that could soon change. China and Russia may be preparing to test their weapons, and several people close to the Trump administration have also said that the U.S. should be ready to test again. Jeff Brumfield, NPR News. Genetic diversity is important to the survival of both plants and animal species, but it appears to be on the decline in at least two-thirds of animal and plant populations, according to research published today in the journal Nature.

Researchers say they examined data for 628 species studied between 1985 and 2019. The greatest losses in genetic variation were seen in birds and mammals. Higher genetic diversity has been linked to greater survivability of plants and animals. Crude little futures prices after briefly moving higher hit their lowest settlement date of the year, oiled down $1.15 a barrel today to settle at $72.62 a barrel in New York. I'm Jack Spear, NPR News in Washington. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things and other currencies. York. I'm Jack Spear, NPR News in Washington.