NPR News Now - NPR News: 03-18-2025 5PM EDT

Episode Date: March 18, 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 Jack Spear. The Israeli military says the ceasefire has officially ended in Gaza with a new Israeli offensive. Gaza health officials say it's killed hundreds. Senior Hamas officials as international mediators have not presented it with a new ceasefire proposal since Israel's newest offensive began. NPR's Daniel Estrin has more from Tel Aviv. Israel's offensive is dubbed

Operation Strength and Sword. An internal Israeli government memo obtained by NPR says, quote, Israel is returning to intensified fighting in Gaza. Israel says its offensive is to press Hamas to accept a proposal by President Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff for the release of more Israeli hostages. Hamas offered a counterproposal last week, which the U.S. and Israel rejected. Senior Hamas official Bassem Naim, based in Qatar, told NPR that mediators have not presented Hamas with a new framework for a ceasefire. Naim says the U.S. must, quote, intervene immediately to stop this aggression. And for Israel to adhere to a January agreement to enter talks for a permanent end of the

war. Daniel Estrin, NPR News, Tel Aviv. The federal judges ruled the Trump administration likely violated the Constitution when it effectively shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development. U.S. District Court Judge Theodore Chuang also blocking Elon Musk's Department of Government efficiency from further cuts to the agency. Judge ordered the Trump administration to restore email and computer access to all employees, including those placed on administrative leave.

The plaintiffs of more than two dozen unnamed current or recently fired employees and contractors of the agency. The Department of Government efficiency placed U.S. AID workers on administrative leave last month, firing many. President Trump is encountering a rare public rebuke from the Chief Justice of the U.S., John Roberts. Trump had called for the impeachment of a judge who ordered a temporary halt to migrant deportation flights.

NPR's Windsor Johnston reports Trump's statement on social media spurred a pointed response today from the head of the federal judiciary. Chief Justice Roberts issued a statement emphasizing that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreements with judicial decisions. Carl Tobias is a law professor at the University of Richmond. No judge has ever been impeached, much less convicted by the Senate, for making decisions with which presidents and members of the Senate and House disagree. Tobias says in nearly 250 years, a total of 15 judges have been the subject of impeachment in the House, and only eight of them have been convicted in the Senate.

All were matters of high crimes and misdemeanors. Windsor-Johnston, NPR News, Washington. Stocks took another swing to the downside today amid continued uncertainty about Trump administration tariffs and worries about a possibility of a U.S. recession. The Dow fell 260 points, the NASDAQ fell more than 300 points. This is NPR. A pair of NASA astronauts who spent far longer aboard the International Space Station than they expected because of Boeing's Problem Plague Starliner capsule are coming home.

Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams returning aboard a SpaceX capsule that is scheduled to splash down this evening off the coast of Florida, weather permitting. The two were only scheduled to be in space for about eight days, but wound up spending nine months aboard the International Space Station. The longtime leaders of both Serbia and Hungary have been shaken by growing protest movements. NPR's owner Beardzi reports analysts say they've never been so vulnerable. Taxi drivers and farmers join students to protest what they call years of cronyism and corruption under Serbian leader Aleksandar Vucic.

Serbia absolutely lacks the proper rule of law. There is very little respect for the constitution. That's analyst Ivana Stradner with the D.C.-based Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. She describes her home country as a hybrid regime with a weak democracy, but says young people are fed up with the cult of personality and want a better future. Similar protests shook neighboring Hungary, where opposition to Viktor Orbán's 15-year hold on power is growing. Eleanor Beardsley in Pierre News. Labs and golden retrievers are still up there in terms of popular U.S. dog breeds, number 2 and 3 respectively, according to the American Kennel Club. But for the fourth year running, the French Bulldog is holding down the number one spot. Breeders

say it can be a mixed blessing. Meanwhile, keep an eye on a breed you may not have heard of, the Cane Corso. Powerful and protective Italian Mastiff has gone from 47th to number 14 in terms of ranking in just a decade. I'm Jack Spear, NPR News in Washington.