NPR News Now - NPR News: 02-18-2025 8PM EST

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

NPR News: 02-18-2025 8PM ESTLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Wondery. At 24 years old, Monika Lewinsky was in a scandal that defined who she was for the entire world. And now, she's ready to draw from her own experience on what it means to redefine yourself on her new podcast, Reclaiming with Monika Lewinsky. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Jack Spear. President Donald Trump today blamed Ukraine for the ongoing war between it and Russia. That war began in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine, eight years after Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula. NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben has more on today's talks.

American and Russian delegations met in Saudi Arabia to discuss ending the war in Ukraine. Ukraine was not invited to those talks, nor were Ukrainian allies in Europe. At a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago club, the president blamed Ukraine for the nearly three-year-long war. And I think I have the power to end this war, and I think it's going very well. But today I heard, oh, well, we weren't invited.

Well, you've been there for three years. You should have ended it three years. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal. Trump made similar comments on the campaign trail. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said his country will not recognize any peace deal made without their participation. Danielle Kurtzleben, NPR News. More than 10,000 federal employees have been fired from their jobs. Most of them were still on probationary status. As NPR's Andrea Shue explains, lawyers are exploring class action lawsuits to challenge those dismissals. Federal employees typically have to get through one or two years of probation before they have full civil service job protections. Still,

attorneys say even without those protections, they may still have a case. Many of the workers fired were told that their performance failed to demonstrate that their employment was in the public interest. David Branch is a longtime employment attorney in Washington, D.C. If you can prove that this statement is false, you probably have a claim for infringement upon your good name and reputation under the Fifth Amendment. The Trump administration says the terminations are about cutting waste and making government more efficient.

Andrea Hsu, NPR News. The U.S. Postal Service plans to step down as NPR's Hansi Lo Wang reports Postmaster General Louis DeJoy set to end a controversial turn that began in 2020 during President Trump's first administration. In a public letter, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is asking the Postal Service Board of Directors to start looking for someone to replace him. It's unclear when DeJoy will step down, but he says in the letter he's committed to a transition that is, quote, the least impactful to the Postal Service and the American people. DeJoy was appointed to lead the Postal Service during the height of the

COVID-19 pandemic and has overseen the rise of voting by mail for two presidential elections. In 2021, DeJoy rolled out a 10-year reorganization plan in an attempt to bring financial stability to the postal system. Critics of the plan, however, say that consolidating mail processing centers and other changes have slowed service, especially in rural communities. On Zila Wong in Pure News, Washington. Stocks after wobbling around a bit today ended up closing higher. The broader market moving past its previous record high. The Dow gained 10 points to close at 44,556.

The Nasdaq was up 14 points. The S&P 500 also gained 14 points. This is NPR. A leader with the militant group, Amos, says plans call for another group of hostage releases this week. Hamas says it will return the bodies of four deceased hostages Thursday and release six living hostages Saturday, both releases in exchange for the freedom of Palestinian prisoners and for Israel allowing long-requested mobile homes and construction equipment into Gaza. Native American activist Leonard Peltier was released from a federal prison in Florida after serving nearly 50 years in connection with the murder of two FBI agents on a South

Dakota reservation, member station WSF's Steve Newborn reports. Peltier's life sentence was commuted to indefinite house arrest in the last days of Joe Biden's presidency. One of his attorneys, activist Chase Ironize, said Peltier will be honored during a ceremony in his native North Dakota before being confined to his home. He's going to be welcomed as a hero in his homeland. We are going to celebrate Leonard Peltier in the same way that we celebrate Nelson Mandela. At his trial, Peltier said he fired his gun at the federal agents in self-defense, but

didn't kill them. For NPR News, I'm Steve Newborn in St. Petersburg, Florida. For small businesses, answering the chicken or the egg question, well, it is definitely the egg, at least in terms of what's hurting the bottom line the most. Restaurants, bakeries and bodegas, all of which use or sell eggs, say right now in many cases they're absorbing the price of eggs as a cost of doing business. Eggs nationwide are now averaging just under $5 a dozen largely because of the avian flu outbreak.

I'm Jack Spear, NPR News in Washington. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things and other currencies. Sending or spending money abroad, hidden fees may be taking a cut. With WISE, you can convert between up to 40 currencies at the mid-market exchange rate. Visit WISE.com. TNCs apply.