NPR News Now - NPR News: 02-05-2025 8PM EST

Episode Date: February 6, 2025

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President Trump is back in Washington, pursuing major policy changes on his own terms. We know from the past that means challenging precedent, busting norms, and pushing against the status quo. NPR is covering it all with Trump's Terms, a podcast where we curate stories about the 47th president with a focus on how he is upending the way Washington works. Listen to Trump's Terms from NPR. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Jack Spear. Dearborn, Michigan is home to a large concentration of Arab and Muslim Americans. NPR's Don Ghani found both anger and strong criticism of President Trump's statement

yesterday that the U.S. could take over Gaza while relocating its Palestinian population to some unnamed country. Sam Ali is a business consultant in Dearborn, a third generation Arab American. He sat out the 2024 presidential election in protest of the Biden administration's handling of the war in Gaza. But he is also very critical of Muslim Americans

who decided the answer was to support Donald Trump. They all got made fools of. All were given empty promises. He said Trump's plans for Gaza would never have been fair or workable for the Palestinian people who call Gaza home. Others expressed concerns that Trump's proposal came with no consultation with those it will affect the most. Don Gagne, NPR News, Dearborn. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is defending the dismantlement of the U.S. Agency for International Development saying, quote, it did not have to be this way. NPR's Michelle Kellerman reports eight officials and embassies around the globe will be sent home with some exceptions.

Rubio is on a swing through Central America visiting embassies, including here in Guatemala, that have big USAID missions. One U.S. official tells me that it feels like they're preparing for an evacuation from a war zone, but where USAID staff are treated as aggressors. Rubio put the blame on the agency's officials in Washington, who he says weren't cooperating with his review. Our preference would have been to do this in a more orderly fashion from the top down, but we had no cooperation and in fact in subordination, and so it required us to work from the bottom

up. Now, he says, his staff is reaching out to embassies around the globe to decide which projects and personnel are worth keeping. Michelle Kellerman, NPR News, Guatemala City. 350,000 Venezuelans are losing legal protection, lying to stay temporarily in the U.S. under a Trump administration rule. NPR's Greg Allen reports ending TPS for Venezuelans will have a large effect on Florida. Large numbers of Venezuelans migrated to Florida in recent decades,

fleeing the authoritarian regimes of Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro. Ending the program means that in two months, hundreds of thousands of them will face possible deportation. The news has sparked an outcry among Venezuelan Americans, many of whom supported Trump for president. Republican county commissioners in Miami-Dade are among those calling on the president to reverse his decision.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said he counts Venezuelan Americans among his supporters, but he's backing Trump. So I think President Trump is getting the law right. He's going to get control over who is in this country. DeSantis says he believes the Biden administration abused TPS in a way that encouraged more Venezuelans to come to the US. Greg Allen, NPR News Miami. This is NPR. With the U.S. and China essentially at the beginning of what could be a lengthy trade

fight, the initial victims are likely to be consumers. A new 10 percent tariff placed against Chinese goods coming into the U.S. and retaliatory tariffs from China are likely to push up the price of everything from toys to electronic devices to pots and pans. Some big ticket items like appliances, furniture and auto parts could also be affected. Tariffs on Chinese goods took effect after President Trump agreed to pause his threatened tariffs against Canada and Mexico. It's hard to say they've temporarily reversed some symptoms of a paralyzing genetic disorder

by stimulating nerves in the spine. The Bureau's John Hamilton reports on the study in the journal Nature Neuroscience. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh tried spinal stimulation on three people with spinal muscular atrophy, a rare inherited disorder that kills off many of the nerve cells that control muscles. During a month of daily stimulation,

participants' leg muscles grew stronger and they were able to walk farther. Doug McCullough, who is 57, was one of the participants. And after some days, my legs just felt supercharged. It's like, man, I feel like I can walk a mile. Stimulation appears to work by restoring connections between the surviving motor neurons, which control muscles, and sensory neurons, which monitor what those muscles are doing. John Hamilton, NPR News.

Crude futures prices fell sharply today. That was as rising US stockpiles coupled with concerns over a new US-China trade war worried traders oiled down more than 2% to end the session at $71.03 a barrel in New York. I'm Jack Spear, NPR News in Washington.