NPR News Now - NPR News: 03-06-2025 4PM EST

Episode Date: March 6, 2025

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These days, there's so much news, it can be hard to keep up with what it all means for you, your family, and your community. The Consider This podcast from NPR features our award-winning journalism. Six days a week, we bring you a deep dive on a news story and provide the context and analysis that helps you make sense of the news. We get behind the headlines. We get to the truth. Listen to the Consider This podcast from NPR. Live from NPR News, I'm Lakshmi Singh. President Trump has signed executive orders that give both Canada and Mexico a nearly month-long break on import tariffs of 25% for goods covered by the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement. NPR's Ada Peralta has more from Mexico City. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum

said that during a phone call, she walked President Trump through a set of his own government statistics. They showed a huge drop in the amount of fentanyl being seized by border authorities. How are we going to continue cooperating, collaborating with something that harms the people of Mexico? I asked him, how can we continue to collaborate if the U.S. is doing something that hurts the Mexican people? It wasn't a threat, she said. I just asked him to understand my position. Sheenbaum said after a respectful conversation, Trump agreed to pause most of the new tariffs

and review it in a month. Sheenbaum had been set to announce retaliatory measures at a mass rally on Sunday. Now she says it will be a celebration. Aida Peralta, NPR News, Mexico City. AIDA PEREZ-ANDREA-SHU Nearly 6,000 fired employees of the U.S. Department of Agriculture have a job again today. An independent federal board ordered them reinstated for 45 days while an investigation into the firings continues. NPR's Andrea Shu has more on how USDA workers are reacting. ANDREA SHU They're not exactly celebrating. I spoke with Michelle Kirchner, an entomologist who was helping alfalfa growers manage pests

when she was fired last month. And here's what she said. I'm feeling kind of yanked around a little bit. I mean, it's good. I'm glad that like some thing is coming out that what happened wasn't correct and was potentially illegal. But she says it's impossible to have any confidence in what's going to happen in the long term. The Trump administration has made clear it

wants to dramatically strengthen the federal government. So she thinks maybe they'll all be brought back only to be fired again. NPR's Andrea Hsu reporting. At least two opposition politicians in Ukraine say they have spoken with the Trump administration about ending the war, but deny that they're strategizing to replace President Vladimir Zelensky. Here's NPR's Joanna Kikissis. The news site Politico first reported that senior Trump officials are holding secret talks with Zelensky's opponents as they seek to replace him. One of those opponents, former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko, spoke to NPR in December and said then that she expected Trump to be tough on Russian President Vladimir Putin. Donald Trump and his team are leaders of the free democratic world, a world that was brought up on the values that we all believe in.

They will never be able to accept what Putin is doing. In statements today Shin and former president Petro Poroshenko acknowledged speaking to Trump officials but said they do not support holding elections until after the war. Joanna Kekesis, NPR News, KU. Before the close, the Nasdaq was down two and a half percent, the Dow and S&P also down more than 1%. It's NPR. Former Olympic snowboarder Ryan James weddings now on the FBI's 10 most wanted lists. U.S. authorities accuse a Canadian national of running a transnational drug trafficking network and orchestrating multiple murders. The FBI is offering a $10 million reward for his capture. Now hospitalized for three weeks, Pope Francis is publicly thanking people for their prayers for his recovery from pneumonia.

The Pope's voice, weak but discernible, heard in a recorded message to an audience gathered in St. Peter's Square for evening prayers for the 88-year-old pontiff. Butterfly numbers have fallen 22% since the year 2000. According to new research in the journal Science, NPR's Jonathan Lambert explains such declines likely extend to all kinds of insects. Jonathan Lambert Monitoring insect populations over time can be tricky, since they're often small and hard to find. But for decades, butterfly enthusiasts and scientists alike have counted butterflies

across the country. Now a team of researchers analyzed butterfly counts from 2000 to 2020, finding declines in all parts of the US for all sorts of butterflies. The researchers found 13 times as many species dropped in numbers as opposed to increased. Habitat loss, pesticide use, and climate change are all likely to blame. Those forces harm other insects too, ones that are harder to study but play key roles in many ecosystems. Jonathan Lampert, NPR News.

The NASDAQ is closed down 2.6 percent. The S&P was down 1.7 percent. It's NPR.