NPR News Now - NPR News: 03-06-2025 1AM EST

Episode Date: March 6, 2025

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Public media counts on your support to ensure that the reporting and programs you depend on thrive. Make a recurring donation today to get special access to more than 20 NPR podcasts, perks like sponsor-free listening, bonus episodes, early access, and more. So start supporting what you love today at plus.npr.org. plus dot npr dot org. Live from NPR News in New York City, I'm Dua-Helisa Icautau. A U.S. appeals court has ruled in favor of the Trump administration, allowing the White House to remove the head of a federal watchdog agency who had challenged the administration's firing of probationary federal workers. And Paris Emily Feng unpacks that legal battle. Hampton Dellinger had been the head of the Office of Special Counsel.

But President Trump fired him last month, a move Dellinger sued over. Dellinger was reinstated by a district court, but an appeals court has overturned that decision. A move that Dellinger's lawyers argue weakened a federal office designed to protect whistleblowers. It's unclear what Dellinger's removal means for some probationary workers who were fired in Trump's cuts to the federal government. Dellinger had argued those terminations of nearly 6,000 workers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture were unlawful. And an independent review board sided with him, ordering the department to reinstate the workers. Emily Fang and Pure News, Washington. The United States has put on hold intelligence sharing with Ukraine.

This comes in the wake of the Trump administration saying it's also pausing all future shipments of security or military assistance. And Piers Tom Bowman reports. U.S. officials, including National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, they've indicated that a pause might be short-lived if President Trump determines Ukraine is serious about moving forward with peace talks. But the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, said cutting off intelligence support to our Ukrainian partners will cost lives.

He says the war itself is at a near stalemate and battlefield gains by both sides are limited, noting that this is, above all, a pressure tactic by the Trump administration against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to agree to a minerals deal and come to a negotiating table. Congressional lawmakers questioned the mayors of four democratic cities in a hearing on

immigration and their sanctuary laws on Wednesday. As NPR's Ava Puchat reports, these policies limit local law enforcement from participating in federal immigration and customs enforcement activity. Arizona Republican Congressman Paul Gosar says the U.S. Constitution gives the federal government jurisdiction and supremacy over all immigration laws. We're the ones who can define that. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu pushed back, saying that would be true if Congress passed comprehensive

bipartisan immigration legislation. If you wanted to make us safe, pass gun reforms. Stop cutting Medicaid. Stop cutting cancer research. Stop cutting funds for veterans. That is what will make our city safe. President Trump signed an executive order his first day in office to end federal funding for sanctuary jurisdictions. The Justice

Department has also sued the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois over sanctuary policies. Eva Pukac, NPR News. And this is NPR. Sesame Workshop has announced layoffs. As NPR's Elizabeth Blair reports, the news comes a day after about 200 of its employees said they wanted to form a union, and a couple of months after the show's future came into question. In a statement, Sesame Workshop says, Amid the changing media and funding landscape,

we have made the difficult decision to reduce the size of our organization. A couple of months ago, Warner Brothers Discovery announced that Max would no longer fund the production of new episodes of Sesame Street after 2025. -♪ Sunny days sweepin' up clouds away. Puppeteers and writers are already union members. This week about 200 of Sesame Workshop's administrative colleagues announced their desire to form

a union. Sesame Workshop says production of the show's 56th season will begin next month, but the company still has not announced a new distributor. Elizabeth Blair, NPR News. An NPR investigation has found a photograph of Stonewall Inn transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson can still be found on the National Park Service website, but information on Johnson and other key figures in the LGBTQ civil rights era have disappeared. The Park Service has removed a number of web pages, including one about Philadelphia gay history and a black

LGBTQ bar in Washington DC, but NPR reviewed dozens of other pages and found inconsistent removal of LGBTQ history, where even the letters T for transgender and the letter Q for queer have been cut, but not all references. This is NPR News. all references. This is NPR News.