NPR News Now - NPR News: 03-02-2025 1AM EST

Episode Date: March 2, 2025

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When she teaches her students how to write a song, musician Scarlett Keys says they need to ask themselves certain questions. What is the thing that keeps you up at night? What's the thing you can't stop thinking about? As songwriters, we are repurposing human tropes and a new viewpoint with new words, with new music. The people and technology behind the soundtracks of our lives. That's on the TED Radio Hour podcast from NPR. Live from NPR News, I'm Dale Willman. One day after a contentious meeting at the White House between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky,

Zelensky has been finding support in a number of places. He was greeted warmly in London Saturday by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who said the UK will support his country until the fighting with Russia stops. And the people of Ukraine also have his back, as MPR's Joanna Kisus tells us. I've been speaking with a lot of people in Kiev and so have our producers, Polina Litvinova and Hannah Palomarenko. And what people have been telling us is that they are very angry at how Zelensky was treated by Trump. They're calling it an ambush, a dirty trick to humiliate Zelensky into supporting a quick deal that benefits only Moscow.

That's NPR's Joanna Kokissis reporting from Kyiv. Protesters gathered at more than 100 national park sites on Saturday to push back on the Trump administration's firing of federal employees at those parks. Rachel Cohen from the Mountain West News Bureau has our reports. People carrying signs and chanting line the street, entering Rocky Mountain National Park about 70 miles from Denver. About four million visitors come here annually. That is people like Aubrey Andrews worried about the upcoming summer season. She was the visual information specialist for the park until she was fired February

14th. For example, the park map, I was in the middle of getting those ordered for the year and so we're not going to have maps for people. In a statement, the National Park Service says it's hiring seasonal workers as it embraces new opportunities for optimization and innovation in workforce management. For NPR News, I'm Rachel Cohen. Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was a one-time Democratic star during the pandemic, but he resigned in 2021 after he faced multiple allegations of sexual harassment. Now he's trying for a comeback in politics by running to be the mayor

of New York City. Michelle Botanegra from Member Station WNYC in New York has more. After months of flirting with a mayoral run in New York City, Cuomo is in. Today, it is necessary

to launch a bold action plan to turn New York City around, to save our city. And his chances are looking good. Cuomo was leading among Democratic candidates in public polling even before he said he'd run. He's joining the race as a corruption scandal closes in on Mayor Eric Adams, who has more

recently been accused of a quid pro quo with President Donald Trump. Some say Cuomo will stand up to the president as many New Yorkers feel under siege. But Cuomo is re-entering the spotlight with a lot of baggage, from COVID policies that contributed to deaths in nursing homes to allegations that he sexually harassed several women, which he denies. For NPR News, I'm Michelle Bocanegra in New York. And you're listening to NPR News. David Johansson, who was the flamboyant frontman of the New York Dolls, died Friday at his home in New York City.

He was 75 years old. He'd recently been diagnosed with stage four cancer. NPR's Chloe Veltman has this remembrance. The New York Dolls rose to fame in the early 1970s with their brash sound and cross-dressing ways. The Dolls' albums flopped, but they influenced a wave of more commercially successful bands including the Ramones, the Sex Pistols and the Smiths. David Johansson talked about the Dolls' origins on WHYY's Fresh Air in 2004.

It was like us against the world and we were really trying to evolve music into something new. Johansson was born on Staten Island into a middle-class family. After graduating high school he gravitated towards New York's experimental performance scene. After the dolls broke up in 1975 Johansson achieved a claim with his martini sipping tuxedo wearing alter ego Buster Poindexter. Chloe Veltman, NPR News. Demonstrators gathered outside Tesla stores across the country on Saturday to protest the automaker's billionaire owner Elon Musk. The protesters are angry over Musk's push

to slash government spending on the behalf of President Trump. They see his actions as playing a disruptive role in Washington D.C. The demonstrators say they hope to discourage the purchase of Tesla vehicles. Customers around the world using Microsoft 365 products reported issues with the service. The company said it identified some suspected code that they say may have caused the problem on Saturday. The outages occurred for a number of hours, but the number of people affected peaked about 4 p.m. Eastern Time.

I'm Dale Willman, NPR News.