NPR News Now - NPR News: 03-07-2025 2PM EST

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

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On Thru Line from NPR. The consequences for the country would have been enormous. It would have been a crisis. The man who saw a dangerous omission in the US Constitution and took it upon himself to fix it. Find NPR's Thru Line wherever you get your podcasts. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Lakshmi Singh. The U.S. economy gained 151,000 jobs in February. Analysts say short of expectations but still strong.

President Trump's reaction at the Oval Office today. I think the labor market is going to be fantastic, but it's going to have high-paying manufacturing jobs as opposed to government jobs. We had too many people in government. You can't just do that. We had many, many, too many. This is for 40 years. This isn't just now. This built up and got worse and worse, and they just hire more and more people. Treasury Secretary Scott Besson spoke to CNBC this morning about what the administration sees as an economy addicted to public spending. He warns the economy could slow as it goes through what he describes as a detox period of transition from public to more private spending.

The White House is hosting the first cryptocurrency summit today. NPR's Deepa Sivaram reports the event is taking place after Trump signed an executive order creating a strategic Bitcoin reserve. The Bitcoin reserve has 200,000 Bitcoin, which amounts to about $17 billion, according to White House cryptos czar David Sachs. The crypto comes from seized assets from criminal and civil court proceedings. And Sachs says the government has been losing money by selling it.

With the reserve, it'll stay put. President Trump is expected to talk more about the reserve at the crypto summit today. His administration has been far more friendly toward the digital asset than the prior administration, though Trump himself has personal investments in cryptocurrency, which has drawn criticism of conflicts of interest.

Deepa Sivaram, NPR News. Today marks 60 years since members of law enforcement attacked civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama, in what has become known as Bloody Sunday. NPR's Debbie Elliott reports the violence that day shocked the nation and helped win support for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Protesters were starting a march from Selma to Montgomery to demand equal voting rights on March 7th, 1965. But they were stopped on Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge by state troopers wielding batons and tear gas. Alabama Congresswoman Terri Sewell of Selma says what took place there changed the face

of American politics. I hope that we, during the 60th anniversary, have an opportunity not just to remember and not just to reflect, but to rededicate ourselves to the cause for which those foot soldiers marched. Sewell has introduced a bill to restore parts of the Voting Rights Act the U.S. Supreme Court struck down in 2013. Debbie Elliott, NPR News, Selma. U.S. stocks are trading higher this hour.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 232 points. This is NPR News. A private lunar lander is no longer operational after it landed sideways near the Moon's south pole yesterday. The private company Intuitive Missions made the announcement marking the second time in less than two years that it had a lander get to the Moon but fall over. The latest spacecraft named Athena missed its mark by more than 800 feet and ended up in frigid crater. It activated some experiments and beam back pictures to Earth that it stopped working. NASA paid 62 million dollars to intuitive machines to get its three

experiments to the moon. Call him DJ Royal Chuck. King Charles III is launching an Apple music playlist of his favorite songs. It drops Monday to mark Commonwealth Day. That's a 56-member group of countries that includes many former British colonies. NPR's Lauren Frayer has more from London. In a video posted to social media, King Charles sits at a big wooden desk at Buckingham Palace with a vintage radio on air sign lit up talking about his love of disco, reggae, and afro beats. It has that remarkable ability to bring happy memories. The video then cuts to a military marching band outside playing Bob Marley.

This playlist fit for a king is called the King's Music Room. The palace says it's the soundtrack of King Charles' life from 1930s standards to Kylie Minogue. Thank you for listening. I wish you all every possible blessing. Lauren Freyer, NPR News, London. All major market indices are up roughly half a percent. You're listening to NPR News.