NPR News Now - NPR News: 04-03-2025 12PM EDT

Episode Date: April 3, 2025

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Oh, hey there. I'm Brittany Luce. And I don't know, maybe this is a little out of pocket to say, but I think you should listen to my podcast. It's called It's Been A Minute, and I love it. And I think you will too. Over the past couple months, over 100,000 new listeners started tuning in. Find out why. Listen to the It's Been A Minute podcast from NPR today. out why. Listen to the It's Been A Minute podcast from NPR Today. Lye from NPR News in Washington. I'm Lakshmi Singh. The White House is defending the president's tariffs plans as a necessary restructuring of the U.S. economy, even as the markets react with alarm. This hour we see the Dow is down more than 1200 points or roughly 3% at 40,955. The Nasdaq has fallen more than 4.5%.

The S&P is down more than 3.5%. And Piers Hammer-Keith reports President Trump is imposing a minimum 10% across the board tariff on virtually all imports to the U.S. A 10% tariff is the baseline. Countries that Trump administration says have particularly high barriers to trade will face even higher tariffs. It's a total shift in the way that we've done economic policy in the United States of America, but it was

necessary. That was vice president JD Vance in an interview on Fox and Friends on the Fox News Channel. He said this is about bringing back U.S. manufacturing. For 40 years, we've had an economy that rewards people who ship American jobs overseas and raises taxes on American workers and we're flipping that on its head. But that is a long-term strategy. An economist warned the U.S. economy is likely to take a hit as a result of this trade war. Tamara Keith, NPR News. U.S. District Judge James Boesberg will hear a challenge today to the Trump administration's

use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The law gives the president authority to detain or deport nationalists of an enemy nation during wartime or invasion. It had not been invoked since World War II until last month. Trump used it as a basis to deport to Central America hundreds of migrants accused of being members of violent gangs The president designated foreign terrorist organizations civil liberties groups argue the administration unlawfully deny the migrants due process and ignored judge Boasberg's emergency order to halt the deportation flights a lawsuit filed by the ACLU says the National Institutes of Health must restore more than

a billion dollars in grants. The organization is also demanding the administration stop its, quote, ideological purge of federally funded research. From member station WBUR, Martha Bebanger has details. The ACLU claims the NIH's canceling of research because it mentions gender identity, diversity, vaccine hesitancy, and COVID is unconstitutional and unlawful. Harvard associate professor Brittany Charlton has lost $5.9 million in contracts because they did not fit Trump administration priorities.

It actually doesn't matter from my understanding what the future priorities are because our current contracts are contracts and the way in which they are terminating them is very outside the norm. There's no response yet from the Trump administration. That's Martha Beeminger reporting. The Dow Jones Industrial Average down 1200 points. This is NPR News. New York City Mayor Eric Adams says he will bypass the Democratic primary and run as an independent. He says the corruption charges filed against him make it impossible to mount a primary

campaign with his current party. Yesterday, a judge dismissed a bribery case against Adams with prejudice. That means the Department of Justice cannot revive the charges against Adams if the mayor does not govern in a way that favors the Trump administration's priorities. The DOJ had asked for the case's dismissal after Mayor Adams publicly aligned himself with the administration's immigration crackdown. Several prosecutors resigned rather than carry out the DOJ's order to drop the corruption case against Adams. New research shows the wealthiest Americans generally live

as long as the poorest northern and western Europeans, that's despite more money being spent on health care in the U.S. Here's NPR's Rob Stein. Researchers at Brown University analyzed data collected from more than 73,000 older adults in the United States and Europe between 2010 and 2022. They weren't surprised to find that the wealthiest people in both the U.S. and Europe tended to live longer than the poorest. But they were surprised by this. The wealthiest Americans didn't live as long as the most affluent Europeans and only tend to have longevity of the poorest Western and

Northern Europeans. That's despite the fact that the US spends more than any other wealthy country on health care. Rob Stein, NPR News. I'm Lakshmi Singh, NPR News in Washington.