NPR News Now - NPR News: 01-29-2026 9AM EST

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Korova Coleman. President Trump's borders are Tom Homan held a press conference last hour in Minneapolis. He says he's talked with several Minnesota state and local leaders. President Trump deployed Homan after federal immigration agents shot and killed a second Minneapolis protester last weekend. Oman says he's there to uphold Trump's immigration policy, but he says there aren't going to be some changes. The mission is going to improve because of the changes we're making it internally. No agency organization is perfect. President Trump and I, along with others in the administration, have recognized that certain

improvements could and should be made. That's exactly what I'm doing here. But Homan says any withdrawal of federal troops on the ground in Minnesota will depend on cooperation from Minnesota authorities. FBI agents have searched an elections office in Georgia. One local Georgia official who was inside the Fulton County office yesterday says FBI agents were seizing ballots from the 2020 presidential election. George has been at the center of President Trump's false claims the election was stolen from him. He repeated the lie this morning online.

NPR Stephen Fowler reports this is the latest salvo in the ongoing fight over baseless claims of election rigging in 2020. The FBI wouldn't answer NPR's questions about the search warrant for the Fulton County elections warehouse outside of Atlanta. But Georgia's most populous county has been the subject of faceless claims of election fraud since 2020. Last month, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit seeking to gain access to Fulton County's ballots, and a state court judge recently allowed the Republican Majority State Election Board to move forward with a subpoena for 2020 documents, too. This, as the DOJ has sued 25 states, including Georgia, seeking access to unredacted copies of their voter rolls. Stephen Powell, NPR News, Atlanta. For months, the Trump administration

has offered little information on how much the President's National Guard deployments in American cities have cost taxpayers. But as NPR's Juliana Kim reports, Congressional Budget analysts now say these operations are on pace to surpass $1 billion this year. Last year, it cost more than half a billion dollars to pay for President Trump's domestic troop deployments. It could be double that this year if current operations remain in place. The use of troops in Washington, D.C. alone could cost $660 million. That's according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. It's a tiny fraction in the country's trillion dollar defense budget,

but state leaders and government watchdog groups argue that these deployments aren't a good use of taxpayer dollars. The White House did not respond to a request for comment, but Trump has repeatedly defended the use of troops and suggested sending them to more cities. Giuliani Kim, NPR News. On Wall Street and pre-market trading, Dow futures are up slightly. You're listening to NPR. Officials from around the country say about 50 people have died from last weekend's powerful winter storm. Weather conditions are still dire in some regions.

About 300,000 customers still don't have electricity in southern states. Most are in Tennessee and Mississippi. It's 24 degrees this morning in Nashville. The average U.S. life expectancy has hit an all-time high. That's according to new data released today by the federal government. But as NPR's Rob Stein reports, the U.S. still has a ways to go toward improving longevity. U.S. life expectancy increased to age 79 in 2024, according to the Center for Health Statistics. That's the highest life expectancy since the government started tracking this key measure of the nation's health and well-being in 1900.

The increase in life expectancy was caused primarily by a drop in deaths from drug overdoses and from COVID-19, which fell out of the time. top 10 causes of death for the first time since the pandemic. But U.S. life expectancy still lags far behind other wealthy nations, such as Australia and Japan. Rob Stein and P.R. News. British Prime Minister Kier Starrmer is in Beijing this week. He and Chinese leader Xi Jinping are calling for a comprehensive partnership between their countries. Britain's overtures to Beijing come along with Canada's economic steps toward China. President Trump has said he will impose a 100% tariff on Canadian imports if it signs a comprehensive trade deal with China. I'm Corva Coleman, NPR News.