NPR News Now - NPR News: 02-21-2025 2AM EST

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

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SHAY STEPHENS, WASHINGTON, NPR NEWS ANCHOR, NPR NEWS ANCHOR, NPR NEWS ANCHOR, NPR NEWS group, CASA, says DHS Secretary Kristi Noem's decision to terminate temporary protective status for Venezuelans is illegal. Federal law sets a timetable and conditions under which TPS can be ended, which the group says were not followed in this case. The Biden administration extended TPS for as many as 600,000 Venezuelans and CASA says under the law the DHS Secretary cannot cut TPS short. The lawsuit cites language used by President Trump and Nome calling Venezuelans dirtbags, criminals and animals as signs that the action violates protections against ethnic and racial discrimination. Greg Allen in PR News Miami. Meantime half a million

Haitians could be deported from the United States this summer. This after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Nome revoked an extension of their TPS status. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright says it was a mistake to fire more than 100 federal workers who were responsible for maintaining the nation's nuclear stockpile. And Paris Jeff Brumthiel has more. In an interview with Scripps News, Wright said the decision to fire employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration was done in haste. I probably moved a little too quickly there, and when we made mistakes on layoffs in NNSA,

we reversed them immediately, less than 24 hours. The NNSA maintains the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile and combats nuclear terrorism, among its other duties. The Department of Energy says that, quote, fewer than 50 workers were ultimately terminated at the agency. Jeff Brumfield, NPR News, Washington. A federal judge has rejected a request from five unions seeking an injunction to block mass layoffs at federal agencies. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper says the plaintiffs should have taken their complaint

to the Federal Labor Relations Authority and not federal court. Trump administration's officials feel frustrated with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky for resisting U.S.-Russia terms for a potential ceasefire. The U.S. is demanding that Ukraine hold elections, stay out of NATO, and share its rare earth minerals to reflect the U.S. military aid it's received in the past three years. But NPR's Joanna Kikissis reports that Zelensky has some demands of his own. Ukraine wants very strong security guarantees to protect itself from Russia, to avoid more invasions in the future.

And Zelensky says he will not give up Ukraine's push for NATO membership or its wish to get back territory occupied by Russia. And Ukrainians, they also want Russia to be held accountable for war crimes. But with the Trump administration, all this is up in the air. Joanna Kokissus in Kyiv. This is NPR. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the military to begin anti-terror operations in the West Bank.

Parts of the area are sealed off in wake of Thursday's explosions aboard three empty buses that had been parked in the city of Bat Yam near Tel Aviv. There were no reported injuries from the blasts. Israeli media reports that Israeli security blamed the attacks on armed groups. Collecting water from fog has been happening for centuries but only studied by science for around 40 years. NPR's Regina Barber reports on a new study that attempts to harness fog to supply water for a lot more people. Altospecial lies in the Atacama Desert and it's perfectly situated to collect fog. At about 2,000 feet in Chile, Alto Especial is the only city which is inside of the cloud. That's geographer Virginia Carter. She led a

study that gathered data at various fog collection sites around the city for a year. In the past, fog collection has only been studied and used in small villages. But for the first time, Carter and her team used computer modeling to map how much water could be collected from fog all over the region. They found that fog could supply hundreds of thousands of liters of drinking water per week, enough to supplement the water demands of under-resourced parts of the city. Regina Barber, NPR News. Members of the U.S. Senate are voting on a series of amendments to a Republican budget resolution.

Lawmakers are pulling an all-nighter to pass some of President Trump's legislative priorities. Trump has already endorsed a broader House proposal that would extend the 2017 tax cuts. This is NPR News.