NPR News Now - NPR News: 03-21-2025 2AM EDT

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

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There's a lot of news happening. You want to understand it better, but let's be honest, you don't want it to be your entire life either. Well, that's sort of like our show, Here and Now Anytime. Every weekday on our podcast, we talk to people all over the country about everything from political analysis to climate resilience, video games. We even talk about dumpster diving on this show. Check out Here and Now Anytime, a daily podcast from NPR and WBUR. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Shea Stevens. Some parents and educators are expressing concern over President Trump's executive order to facilitate the shutdown of the Department of Education.

But Indiana's Republican Governor Mike Braun is among those applauding the move, saying it'll be better for states and parents. I think all of the things that the federal government has been doing, if the states want the responsibility, yes, we're going to have to find out entrepreneurial ways to do it and do it sustainably. The things that we know are good, we need to keep around. Any shutdown of the education department will require congressional approval.

President Trump's firing of two Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission is likely headed to the U.S. Supreme Court. As NPR's Andrea Shue reports, opponents of the move call it an abuse of power. The White House says that Trump has the authority to fire whomever he wants from independent agencies such as the FTC

or the National Labor Relations Board or the Merit Systems Protection Board. A 1935 Supreme Court ruling holds that presidents can only fire members of such agencies for cause. Jared Davidson from the legal advocacy group Protect Democracy says it's important that independent agencies remain above politics. They're supposed to be working for the American people and not supposed to be working in service of any one president. But the Trump administration has argued that limiting the president's authority over them is unconstitutional and says it's prepared to make its case at the Supreme Court.

Andrea Hsu, NPR News. A federal judge has temporarily blocked Elon Musk's Doge team from accessing the Social Security Administration's personal data on millions of Americans. U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Hollander also ordered Doge to delete any identifiable personal information already obtained. Doge members say they're trying to reduce waste and fraud at the administration. Officials in Kiev and Moscow confirm that a Ukrainian drone attacked has severely damaged an air base in southern Russia.

The tales from NPR's Eleanor Beardsley. The Ingol air base is in the Saratov region, about 450 miles from the front lines in Ukraine. Video on social media showed fires and huge plumes of smoke fed by explosions and secondary detonations of ammunition. The base hosts Russia's nuclear-capable heavy strategic bombers. Ukraine said the base is used to launch missile strikes on its territory and quote terrorist attacks against the civilian population. The governor of Saratov called it the most massive drone attack of all time. Some 30 houses around the airfield were also damaged.

The war has put both Ukraine and Russia at the forefront of drone innovation and production. Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Kyiv. This is NPR. California and three other states are suing the Environmental Protection Agency for freezing $20 billion in clean energy grants. The plaintiffs say that the EPA is breaking the law by ending funding that was already approved by Congress. A federal judge says the government may not deport a detained Georgetown University graduate

fellow from India. Badr Khan Suri was arrested Monday at his home in Arlington, Virginia, near Washington. He's accused of spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting anti-Semitism on social media. Attorney Hassan Ahmad says his client has not engaged in political activism and believes that DHS's allegations stem from the actions of Surrey's father-in-law. Some new research shows that seals can perceive internal oxygen levels in order to keep themselves from drowning. As NPR's Jonathan Lambert reports, it is the first time that such an ability has been demonstrated in animals. When humans hold their breath, the urge to breathe is driven by a buildup of carbon dioxide

in our blood, not oxygen. That's the case for virtually all other mammals, but not for gray seals, according to a study published today in the journal Science. Researchers varied the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide captive gray seals could breathe and then watched how long they stayed underwater to find food. The higher the oxygen levels, the longer seals stayed under. But carbon dioxide levels had little effect, suggesting seals evolved a new way of not drowning.

Jonathan Lambert, NPR News. You're listening to NPR News.