NPR News Now - NPR News: 01-29-2026 10AM EST

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Kourva Coleman. President Trump's border czar says the number of federal immigration agents can be reduced in Minnesota, but Tom Homan says that can only happen if Minnesota officials cooperate. Homan told reporters this morning he is there to carry out Trump's border policies. People in Minnesota are reacting in different ways as immigration operations continue. One cafe in Minneapolis has announced it will no longer charge patrons. From Minnesota Public Radio, Alex V. Suppoli has more. Modern Times Cafe bustles with regulars. Servers yell out orders, and not one customer pays a bill. Instead, they make donations into a tip jar.

Owner Dylan Alverson says the decision to be free is one way to help the community. Federal agent shot and killed Renee McClintood only four blocks away. And Alex Pretty, a neighborhood over. We're in wartime. I'm just starting to think radically and say, like, if the world is chaos, then business owners have to adapt to that chaos. Alverson says they've been flooded with donations from across the country. He says the cafe will operate this way until ICE leaves the city. For NPR News, I'm Alex Vesipoli in Minneapolis.

FBI agents have searched an elections office in Georgia. Local election officials in Fulton County say agents seized ballot records from the 2020 president. election. George has been at the center of President Trump's false claims that the election was stolen from him. The chair with the Fulton County Board of Commissioners, Rob Pitts, says the items that were taken yesterday include ballot signature envelopes. So we can no longer, and I can no longer as chair of this board, satisfy not only the citizens of Atlanta, but the citizens of the world, that those ballots are still secure. So that is a major concern that I have right now. The Justice Department filed a lawsuit last month seeking to get access to Fulton County's ballots from 2020.

Stocks opened lower this morning as the Commerce Department reported a rebound in the nation's trade deficit. NPR Scott Horsley reports the Dow Jones Industrial average dropped about 100 points in early trading. After bottoming out in October, the U.S. trade deficit nearly doubled in November. exports fell during the month while imports rose. The trade gap has been volatile as exporters and importers try to adjust to rapid changes in the president's tariff policies. The heavy equipment maker Caterpillar says it expects to pay $2.6 billion in tariffs this year. Caterpillar reported record sales for 2025, powered by strong demand from data centers. But double-digit import taxes were a drag on the company's profit margins. New applications for unemployment benefits

showed little change last week. The Federal Reserve highlighted some signs the job market is stabilizing as it decided to leave interest rates unchanged this week. Scott Horsley-Hare News Washington. This is NPR. From Texas to New England, power is slowly being restored to homes and businesses affected by last weekend's winter storm, but 300,000 customers are still in the dark. Most of them are in Mississippi and Tennessee. At least 50 people were killed in the wintry weather, according to state and local officials across the country. Bitterly cold temperatures still persist. It's now 25 degrees in Raleigh, North Carolina. Carolina. MPR's Debbie Elliott reports, forecasters are warning of another blast of Arctic air before the weekend.

The National Weather Service says the next blast of Arctic air could result in the longest duration of bitter cold in several decades. A freeze warning will dip down into Florida. Mississippi Governor Tate Reeve says that complicates recovery efforts. It's going to be brutally cold again in the state of Mississippi. And so that creates a large number of of other challenges, particularly for those who have not yet gotten power back, particularly for those whose water systems are not back operating and functioning exactly the way they need to. The University of Mississippi says its campus in Oxford will remain closed for a second week. Debbie Elliott, NPR News. Meanwhile, some unions for federal workers are suing the Trump administration. They're protesting President Trump's plans to cut some 10,000 workers from the federal emergency

Management Agency. They claim President Trump is misleading the public about how deep the cuts are to the disaster management agency. I'm Corva Coleman, NPR News in Washington.