NPR News Now - NPR News: 02-06-2025 10AM EST

Episode Date: February 6, 2025

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Matt Wilson spent years doing rounds at children's hospitals in New York City. I had a clip-on tie. I wore Heelys, size 11. Matt was a medical clown. The whole of a medical clown is to reintroduce the sense of play and joy and hope and light into a space that doesn't normally inhabit. Ideas about navigating uncertainty. That's on the TED Radio Hour podcast from NPR. Janine Herbst Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Janine Herbst. There are just hours remaining for federal workers to decide whether to take the Trump

administration's offer to resign from their jobs now and keep their pay and benefits through September 30th, despite agencies only being funded through mid-March. As NPR's Andrea Shue reports, a federal court in Boston is weighing a request for a stay. Danielle Pletka U.S. District Judge George O'Toole, who's a Clinton appointee, will preside over a hearing scheduled for 1 p.m. Eastern time. The lawsuit was brought by unions representing more than 800,000 civil servants. It alleges that the deferred resignation offer is arbitrary and capricious,

as well as unlawful. The unions argue that the offer fails to consider possible adverse consequences to the government's ability to function and is pretext for removing and replacing workers on an ideological basis. The offer went out to more than two million civilian employees of the federal government, including this week to members of the National Security Agency and the CIA. Andrea Hsu, NPR News. President Trump's plan to quote own Gaza and relocate its population, some two million people to other countries, is drawing criticism from many countries, including Egypt and Jordan, who say they won't take in Gaza's war refugees.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio yesterday doubled down on the plan, suggesting Palestinians would have no choice but to move. The only thing President Trump has done very generously, in my view, is offer the United States willingness to step in, clear the debris, clean the place up from all the destruction that's on the ground, clean it up of all these unexploded munitions. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be on Capitol Hill today to meet with Republican Senate and House leadership. Stocks opened higher this morning as the Labor Department delivered a report card on workers'

productivity and Pierre Scott Horsley has more. U.S. workers got a little more productive in the final months of 2024 churning out 1.2% more goods and services with every hour of work. That's important because when workers are more productive they can earn higher wages without putting upward pressure on prices. New applications for unemployment benefits inched up last week as 219,000 people applied for jobless aid. We'll get a more complete snapshot of the job market tomorrow when the Labor Department reports on employment gains for the month of January. The generally solid job market has given the Federal Reserve leeway to hold interest rates steady after three rate cuts last fall. Today, the Bank of England

lowered its benchmark interest rate for the third time in six months. Scott Horsley in PR News, Washington. On Wall Street, the Dow has reversed gains, earlier gains today. It's now trading flat at 44,873. The NASDAQ is up 18 points. The S&P 500 is up by 8 points. For the S&P 500, that's up about one-tenth of a percent. You're listening to NPR News. tenth of a percent. You're listening to NPR News. In his first administration, President Trump railed at his political foes for what he called a merciless campaign to erase history with the removal of Confederate monuments. At the National Prayer Breakfast this morning, he said he's establishing a new national park. I have signed an executive order to resume the process of creating a new national park. I have signed an executive order to resume the process of creating a new national park

full of statues of the greatest Americans who ever lived. We're going to be honoring our heroes, honoring the greatest people. Though he didn't give any indication of where it would be or who would be in it. A UCLA report finds the Los Angeles area wildfires have caused between $95 and $164 billion in total property and capital losses. CAP radio's Manola Sakaita has more. So far, the Eaton and Palisades fires have resulted in the loss of over 16,000 homes and other structures. Ju-Yen Lee is an economist with UCLA's Anderson School of Management and a co-author of the

report. She says this could be California's most expensive series of wildfires to date, in large part because of where they happened. We see that the median home price in these two recent fires is much higher than previous ones. That may cause more loss. She says the damage could also cause a loss of $4.6 billion for Los Angeles County's GDP for 2025.

For NPR News, I'm Enola Segeida in Sacramento. On Wall Street, the Dow was down 28 points, the NASDAQ up 16, S&P 500 up eight. You're listening to NPR News. Our long national nightmare is over. You're listening to NPR News.