NPR News Now - NPR News: 04-04-2025 9PM EDT

Episode Date: April 5, 2025

NPR News: 04-04-2025 9PM EDTLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Mint Mobile. Mint Mobile took what's wrong with wireless and made it right. They offer premium wireless plans for less and all plans include high-speed data, unlimited talk and text, and nationwide coverage. See for yourself at mintmobile.com slash switch. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Jack Spear. Stocks in the US were in a freefall for a second day today as President Trump continues to push retaliatory tariffs against much of the world. The Dow fell more than 2,000 points

for just the fourth time in history. The broader market suffered even higher percentage point losses. Speaking today to the Society for Advancing Business, Editing and Writing, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell says the central bank is taking a wait-and-see approach. We've taken a step back and we're watching to see what the policies turn out to be and the ways in which they will affect the economy and then then we'll be able to act. Fortunately, our policy stance is in a good place for us to do that. President Trump has called on the Fed to take some action, though most economists are calling the

current market plunge self-inflicted and outside of the Fed's mandate of full employment and moderate inflation. Looking at the numbers, the Dow dropped 2,231 points, the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 both fell by nearly 6% today. The Trump administration will scuttle a VA mortgage program that by the administration's own estimate had saved 17,000 veterans from losing their homes. NPR's Quill Lawrence reports. During the pandemic, the Department of Veterans Affairs made an error implementing the VA home loan that left tens of thousands of

veterans facing foreclosure through no fault of their own. VA finally stood up a fix called VASP late last year. Since then, it has rescued 17,000 veterans facing foreclosure. But some Republicans in Congress don't like the program because it means the VA takes on the mortgages and the risk. They've proposed a different kind of rescue program. Now, VA says it will end the VASP program on May 1st, but has not yet announced any alternative to replace it. Housing advocates and the Mortgage Bankers Association have warned without any rescue program thousands of veterans could lose their homes. Quill Lawrence, NPR News. The Trump administration is ordering federal forest managers to boost logging by 25% on public lands.

NPR's Kirk Sigler reports the Secretary of Agriculture has released what the administration is calling an emergency order on forest management. Fast-tracking logging on public land is part of the administration's broader push to onshore manufacturing, in this case sawmills. Trump's agriculture secretary is now ordering U.S. Forest Service managers to expedite timber sales on federal land in the West and loosen National Environmental Policy Act provisions. This is not a new strategy. The previous Trump administration and GOP presidents before him enacted similar measures with mixed results. The obstacles this time include infrastructure, so many sawmills in the U.S. have closed in recent decades, partly due to automation and cheaper imports from Canada.

And Trump adviser Elon Musk has been cutting forest service jobs, including the agency officials who are needed to plan and approve the timber sales. Kirk Ziegler, NPR News, Seattle. You're listening to NPR. The U.S. Supreme Court today sided with the Trump administration, at least for now, in a dispute over the Department of Education's freeze of DEI-related grants. The administration has taken several grievances to the high court recently, but this was the first of its legal theories to stick. By a 5-4 vote,

justices allowing the administration to freeze millions of dollars in grant funding for diversity and instructional programs at public and private universities. Five months after Election Day, the race for a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court remains undecided. As Rosty Jacobs of Member Station WUNC reports, a state appeals court has ruled a lower court was wrong to dismiss the losing candidates challenged to tens of thousands of votes. Multiple recounts show that Democratic incumbent Justice Allison Riggs leads Republican Jefferson Griffin by 734 votes. But Griffin has challenged more than 60,000 ballots over alleged irregularities without providing evidence. The state elections

board dismissed his protests and a judge backed the decision. Now a Republican two-judge majority on an appeals court has given challenged voters 15 days to verify their eligibility or risk nullification of their votes. In dissent, the sole Democrat on the panel said the decision would give the losing candidate another shot at winning by disenfranchising legitimate voters. The case could ultimately go to the state Supreme Court on appeal. For NPR News, I'm Rusty Jacobs in Durham, North Carolina. RUSTY JACOBS Critical futures prices plunged today along with U.S. stocks and the global markets amid

concerns about an escalating trade war oiled down nearly $5 a barrel in New York. I'm Jack Spear, NPR News in Washington. This message comes from Mint Mobile. Mint Mobile took what's wrong with wireless and made it right. They offer premium wireless plans for less, and all plans include high-speed data, unlimited talk and text, and nationwide coverage. See for yourself at mintmobile.com switch.