NPR News Now - NPR News: 03-14-2025 8AM EDT

Episode Date: March 14, 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 in Washington, I'm Korva Coleman. Two federal judges have now ordered the Trump administration to rehire thousands of probationary federal workers that have been fired. Both judges found the administration told the workers they were being let go for poor performance. Instead, they found that these were reductions in force that had nothing

to do with the employees' work. And Pierre's Chris Arnold says one federal judge in California declared the Trump administration was telling a lie. The judge called the mass firing a sham to get around statutory requirements. And he said that the administration exceeded its authority by having one office in the government direct so many other agencies to just summarily fire all these workers.

And here's Chris Arnold reporting. The Trump administration has already moved to appeal the decision. Stock prices are sharply higher in pre-market trading this hour. This comes after the Dow and the NASDAQ plunged yesterday. The S&P 500 index has lost so much value recently that it's now in what's called correction territory. This comes after President Trump imposed a variety of tariffs on foreign goods. And PRS camera Keith reports Trump used to celebrate stock market gains but is not doing

so now. Trump used to boast about the way the markets rose on news of his election and how people's 401Ks were doing. This past weekend on Fox News, he was asked about falling stock values. You can't really watch the stock market. Former Trump economic adviser, Stephen Moore, says Trump always has his eye on the markets.

He does care about people's 401k plans. He does want a booming stock market. And so obviously there's some agitation about what's been going on in the last couple of weeks with this steep fall in stock prices. The slide has coincided with Trump's on-again, off-again tariff threats. On that, the president says he's not going to bend at all. Tamara Keith, NPR News. Russian President Vladimir Putin says he is open to the general idea of a 30-day ceasefire in Russia's war in Ukraine, but he's setting a lot of conditions on it.

Ukraine has accepted the temporary truce but warns Putin cannot be trusted. And Piers-Ellenor Beardsley reports, European leaders also doubt Putin will be an honest partner. Piers-Ellenor Beardsley, P.S. For years, Europeans witnessed Putin break ceasefires when the leaders of France and Germany tried to end the fighting in the Donbass. Former French Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine told BFM TV that negotiations will likely be very complicated.

We don't know how far Putin will go, he said, and Trump is in such a hurry to get a deal. Will Putin take advantage of that to push more demands? The net Vladimir Zelensky certainly thinks so. In his nightly address Thursday, Zelensky said Putin is setting preconditions so that nothing will work out for as long as possible. Zelensky called on the international community to pressure Putin, saying Russia would have to be forced to end this war. Eleanor Beardsley in Pierre News, Kyiv.

You're listening to NPR. The Senate needs to vote soon on a Republican-backed government spending bill. If the legislation fails, the federal government will partially shut down late tonight. Democrats have reviled the bill, saying it will gut federal programs. But Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has reversed himself. He says as much as he lows this bill, he'll vote for it. He says President Trump would likely use a government shutdown to fire many more federal workers, defund federal programs, and dismantle more of the U.S. government.

A new report from NASA scientists shows ocean temperatures rose increasingly faster than expected last year. As NPR's Lauren Summer reports, sea levels are rising as the climate gets hotter. Hotter temperatures are melting huge amounts of ice that's stored in glaciers and ice sheets. That water is causing sea levels to rise, which have already gone up four inches since 1993. But last year, the oceans rose even more than expected. That's because sea levels also rise when oceans get warmer

because warmer water expands. Last year, ocean temperatures were the hottest ever recorded and drove most of the sea level rise. NASA scientists say the pace of sea level rise is increasing year by year. That threatens hundreds of millions of people who live in coastal cities. Lauren Sommer, NPR News. If you were up overnight, you might have caught the total lunar eclipse. The Earth blocked the sunlight that normally reaches the moon's surface. Instead, what many sky watchers saw was a blood moon.

That's when the moon appears to turn red when it is covered by the Earth's shadow. I'm Korva Coleman, NPR News from Washington.