NPR News Now - NPR News: 03-19-2025 4PM EDT

Episode Date: March 19, 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. The Social Security Administration has announced it will soon require people seeking some services to prove their identities in person. These changes come at a time when the agency is making cuts to its staff and closing various local offices. Here's NPR's Ashley Lopez.

Agency officials say over the next two weeks, they're going to transition to a process that quote, strengthens the identity proofing procedures for people seeking social security benefit claims and direct deposit changes. Instead of doing this on the agency's website, which has an online identity proving system, people will have to go in person to a local social security office. Agency officials say this is an effort to prevent fraud. But advocates say these changes will make it harder for Americans to collect their earned

benefits and force seniors and people with disabilities to travel in person at a time when the Social Security Administration is closing local offices across the country and reducing staff. Ashley Lopez, NPR News. when the Social Security Administration is closing local offices across the country and reducing staff. Ashley Lopez, NPR News. A court order deadline is now up for the administration to answer questions about last weekend's deportation flights carried out under an 18th century wartime law. U.S. District Judge James Boesberg seeking more details about the administration's actions, even though he'd ordered the planes carrying alleged Venezuelan gang members out of the U.S. to be turned around. This afternoon, White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt criticized the judge's ruling.

We don't have any flights planned specifically, but we will continue with the mass deportations. And I would just like to point out that the judge in this case is essentially trying to say that the president doesn't have the executive authority to deport foreign terrorists from our American soil. That is an egregious abuse of the bench. This judge cannot does not have that authority. It is the opinion of this of this White House and of this administration. And that's why we're fighting this in court. Trevor's call for Boasberg's impeachment, US Chief Justice John Roberts pushed back saying disagreement with a judge's ruling should be addressed in the appeals process.

More. Presidents Trump and Zelenskyy of Ukraine spoke by phone a day after Trump's conversation with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. President Trump is promising to help Ukraine get back children who were abducted by Russia, but his administration canceled an aid program that was gathering information about more than 30,000 Ukrainian children believed to have been taken to Russia during the course of the war. Here's NPR's Michelle Kellerman. In a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, some lawmakers raised

concerns about the aid cut to Yale researchers gathering information about Russian war crimes in Ukraine. Ohio Democrat Greg Lansman tells NPR the database he had been searching disappeared. Greg Lansman, Ohio Democrat It's a lot of demographic data and a lot of satellite information that we now can't find. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce says the information about abducted children has not been deleted but is not housed at the State Department. That's NPR's Michelle Kellerman.

More Americans are taking prescriptions for ADHD than ever before, and more are misusing the medicines than ever before. That is according to a new study from JAMA Psychiatry. NPR's Katie Riddle has details. During the pandemic, many adults started taking stimulants for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The researchers who conducted this study looked at how people are

using these drugs in light of this new demand. They underscored that most people do use stimulants safely and effectively and emphasized that it's important to keep them widely available. However, they did also find that more than 25% of adults with a prescription reported misuse. That means taking too much of a drug or too often or any other ways their doctor did not prescribe. This kind of behavior is correlated with substance use disorder of other kinds that can be quite dangerous. The researchers called for careful monitoring of people using these drugs. Katie Rettl, NPR News. The Pentagon's website no longer includes the military story of the legendary Jackie

Robinson, a second lieutenant in the army who went on to break the color barrier in Major League Baseball. It's the latest in the government-wide purge of diversity, equity, and inclusion content and programs that were designed to promote the fair treatment of historically marginalized groups. But President Trump and other critics argued DEI undermines individual merit and has a discriminatory effect. Before the close, U.S. stocks were trading higher with the Dow up 383 points or nearly 1% at 41964. It's NPR.