NPR News Now - NPR News: 02-02-2025 6PM EST

Episode Date: February 2, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Janene Herbst. The Trump administration's efforts to cut the federal workforce are causing confusion and panic across federal agencies. As NPR's Franco Ordonez reports, Trump says he wants to shrink the federal workforce. The White House's Office of Personnel Management has told government workers that if they quit by February 6, they would still get paid through September 30. Trump told reporters that his goal is to carry out a long-time Republican plan to reduce the size of the government. Everybody's replaceable and we'll get very good people to replace them if it turns out

to be more than we thought. It could be a lot, it could be a little, we don't know, but we'd love to have them leave. The White House bypassed Congress, which is supposed to approve such an offer. Combine that with moves to shut down diversity programs and the USAID website going dark has set off a panic among federal workers who are uncertain about the future of their jobs. Franco, Ordonez, NPR News. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Canada didn't ask for a trade war but

won't back down. He says Canada will put a matching 25 percent tariff on U.S. imports after President Trump signed an order imposing stiff tariffs on Canada as well as Mexico and China. China says it will take countermeasures, including filing a complaint with the World Trade Organization. Mexico's president is also ordering retaliatory measures. And here's Ada Peralta has more. Mexico has been warning that a tariff war between the two countries would have huge effects not just for American consumers but also for American companies manufacturing in Mexico. Mexico is the number one provider of cars and car parts for the United States.

Mexico's economy secretary Marcelo Ebrard said Americans could see a hike in prices in everything from avocados and beer to cars, trucks and medical equipment. The biggest impact, he said, is that millions of American families will have to pay 25% more. Ada Peralta, NPR News. In Washington, family members of the victims of the midair plane crash with an Army helicopter last week near Reagan National Airport visited the crash site this morning commemorating the 67 people who died.

Washington, D.C. Fire Chief John Donnelly. So far, 55 victims have been positively identified from this accident. The search for the remaining 12 in the Potomac River continues. The Army Corps of Engineers is expected to begin removing the debris from the river tomorrow. The Corps says they will start with the removal of the larger remnants of the jet, and that's expected to take three days. They will then remove the Black Hawk helicopter. The National Transportation Safety Board is still analyzing the flight and data recorders in the search for the cause. Continues. You're listening to NPR News from Washington. Astronomers are keeping a watchful eye on an asteroid nearly the size of a football field that right now has a 1 in 63 chance of hitting Earth in eight years.

But as NPR's Scott Newman reports, the odds of a miss may improve with time. Known as 2024 YR4, the asteroid could be up to 300 feet in diameter. An impact from an object that big could do significant damage if it hit a populated area. But Paul Chodas, director of NASA JPL Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, stresses that the odds are still in our favor. The impact probability could continue to rise, but the odds are it will fall to zero at some point. And there's a 98.4 chance that it will not impact.

So that's the most likely situation. Chodis and others hope to rule out an Earth strike by mid-April, when the asteroid will become too dim to see even in the largest telescopes. They won't get another look at it until 2028. Scott Newman, NPR News. The outlook for the onset of spring? Well, that's not looking so good. That's according to the famous rodent, Huxitawney Phil. The groundhog, who lives in Gobbler's Knob, Pennsylvania, saw his shadow today, Groundhog Day, which means six more weeks of winter. Of course,

his predictions aren't always correct. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, says he was right only 35 percent of the time in the past 25 years. The tradition of predicting the weather has been going on since 1887. I'm Janene Herbst, NPR News.