NPR News Now - NPR News: 02-12-2025 7PM EST

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

NPR News: 02-12-2025 7PM ESTLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Technologist Paul Garcia is using AI to create photos of people's most precious memories. How her mother was dressed, the haircut that she remembered. We generated tens of images and then she saw two images that was like, that was it. Ideas about the future of memory. That's on the TED Radio Hour podcast from NPR. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Jack Spear. Ukraine's president says he spoke with President Trump about the possibilities of achieving peace in a full scale war Russia started three years ago. NPR's Joanna Kisus reports from Kyiv. Trump also spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

reports from Kyiv, Trump also spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In his evening video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was grateful to Trump for his interest in what Ukraine and the U.S. can do together. He said Ukraine was ready to work with the U.S. on technological capabilities, including drones and resource cooperation. And he said Trump also spoke about his conversation with Putin. Zelensky said, we believe that America's strength is enough to push Russia and Putin to peace together with us, together with all our partners. A short time earlier, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Ukraine should not expect NATO

membership or the return of Russian occupied territories. Joanna Kekesis, NPR News, Kyiv. A Massachusetts federal district judge has upheld the Trump administration's offer of deferred resignation to employees known as the Fork in the Road. The offer gives more than two million civilian federal workers the option to declare now they'll resign in September to keep their pay and benefits for which they might or might not have to work or risk being laid off later. The judge writing the federal unions that brought the lawsuit on behalf of the federal workers lack standing to challenge the offer in court.

Government lawyers said they did not need approval from Congress to keep resigning employees on the payroll through September. The White House says the Trump administration will appeal judicial rulings or at least temporarily standing in the way of President Trump's sweeping efforts to reshape and shrink the federal government. As NPR's Tamara Keith reports, lawsuits challenging the administration's actions continue to mount. Press Secretary Caroline Levitt said the media is spending too much time talking about the possibility of a constitutional crisis and said President Trump will comply with the law and the courts, but will also seek every legal remedy to overturn the injunctions.

The real constitutional crisis is taking place within our judicial branch, where district court judges and liberal districts across the country are abusing their power to unilaterally block President Trump's basic executive authority. The White House has taken an expansive view of the president's executive authority. Echoing Trump's words, Levitt called the judges activists. Tamara Keith, NPR News. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is the latest congressionally established agency to have its work halted by the Trump administration.

Congress established the CFPB in 2010 in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to prevent unfair or deceptive practices by credit card companies, mortgage lenders, debt collectors, and big banks. Stocks closed mixed today on Wall Street, the Dow down 225 points. This is NPR. Baltimore City and Maryland are suing Glock Inc. over the manufacture of pistols. They say can be turned into machine guns within minutes. Member station WYPR Emily Hofstadter is more. Auto sears allow a weapon to fire continuously as long as the trigger is compressed.

They are now illegal in Maryland. Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown argues that Glock pistols are particularly easy to turn into automatic weapons with the help of that device. Glock could have designed its pistols to prevent auto seers from working. They chose not to. That choice cost lives. Baltimore City Police say they recovered over 100 illegally modified Glocks in 2024. Half of the people arrested for the modification were under 21, including a 13-year-old. Glock did not immediately respond to WYPR's request for comment.

There are similar lawsuits against Glock in Chicago, New Jersey, and Minnesota. For NPR News, I'm Emily Hofstadter. New drugs like Ozempic and Wigovia have transformed people's lives, changed their relationship with food. Now there's some evidence the drugs might also help people with problems with alcohol. Well, only a small study has been done so far. A group of 48 people who took the drug over a two-month period appeared to have had reduced cravings for not just food but also alcohol.

A study was published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry. Experts say it's still not clear how safe the drugs are though for people who don't need to lose weight. Critical futures prices gave up some of their recent gains as markets try to gauge how a possible end to hostilities between Russia and Ukraine would play out, oil down nearly $2 a barrel today in New York. I'm Jack Spear, NPR News in Washington.

NPR covers in Washington.