NPR News Now - NPR News: 04-08-2025 5PM EDT

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

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These days, there is a lot of news. It can be hard to keep up with what it means for you, your family, and your community. Consider This from NPR is a podcast that helps you make sense of the news. Six days a week, we bring you a deep dive on a story and provide the context, backstory, and analysis you need to understand our rapidly changing world. Listen to the Consider This Podcast from NPR. Jack Spear Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Jack Spear. Despite announcements the Trump administration is ready to talk tariffs, mixed messages continue to roil the financial markets. Here's NPR's Morle Iason. Morle Iason According to White House Press Secretary Caroline

Levitt, the president has directed his trade team to create tailor-made deals for each country. It's still not clear what Trump's goal is to eliminate trade imbalances in goods, but not services with every country in the world, or to use the big tariffs to bring in what he says will be trillions of dollars of revenue. Levitt says 70 countries have reached out to the White House since Trump announced the tariffs. The Israeli prime minister has already been to the White House, and next week the leaders of El Salvador and Italy will come. Financial markets all over the world have reacted negatively to Trump's tariffs, but

they've rebounded a bit when the White House messaging started focusing more on negotiating deals. Mara Eliason, NPR News. Though the Dow fell 320 points today, Wall Street's so-called fear gauge, which has rarely been at the levels it is right now, what's known as the VIX, which the Chicago Board Options exchanges constructed to measure volatility, is usually somewhere around 20. There have been only two periods in history where the index has closed consistently above 50 during the 2008 financial crisis and early in the pandemic. Today, amid all the gyrations in the markets,

the VIX was up nearly 13% to just under 53. House Speaker Mike Johnson is going ahead with a plan to have the chamber vote on the Senate budget resolution Wednesday, despite not having the votes to pass it, appears Barbara Sprunt reports. The Senate has passed a budget framework, a key step in unlocking much of President Trump's agenda.

But to move forward, the House also has to pass it, and members say they don't think it currently has the votes. Deficit hawks like Texas Congressman Chip Roy say the Senate version doesn't include enough spending cuts alongside tax cuts. The Senate budget does not reduce deficits. The Senate budget would increase deficits. Speaker Johnson wants to get the final bill to Trump's desk by Memorial Day. The president has previously helped whip support among holdouts for his priorities and may be doing so again now. Barbara Sprunt and Peer News, the capital. As the measles outbreak continues,

Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is endorsing a vaccine. Here's NPR's Jeff Bromfield. In a post on X, Kennedy wrote, quote, the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine. It's the strongest statement yet from the health secretary, who once ran a charity that tried to end school requirements for measles vaccines. Many of Kennedy's supporters oppose mandatory childhood vaccination. Mary Talley-Boden is a Texas physician who thinks children shouldn't get COVID vaccines. She says she feels double-crossed. For him to say that was not consistent with what we were expecting.

The CDC says the MMR shot prevents up to 97% of measles cases and provides further protection against severe illness. So far two unvaccinated children and one unvaccinated adult have died in this latest outbreak. This is NPR. The collapse of a roof at an iconic nightclub at the Dominican Republic has claimed the lives of at least 14 people, as many as 160 others, were hurt. Crews are continuing to search for more people in the rubble left behind under the roof of the Jet Set Nightclub in Santo Domingo. The governor of the Northwestern province of Monte Christi was among the victims. The death toll from flooding in Kentucky has now risen to four and the

extent of the destruction remains unknown as Karen Zarr with member station WUKY reports emergency groups and volunteer organizations are canvassing the state to help those who've been impacted. Too much water on the ground has led to not enough water to drink. Pumping stations and water treatment plants in several Kentucky cities and towns are on the brink. At a park in Georgetown, hundreds of cases of bottled water are stacked and being handed out from a picnic shelter. In the Seniors Center across the parking lot, John Sternberg with the Red Cross helps people

who have lost everything settle in. These people, they are not going to be able to go back where they were. Governor Andy Beshear says plans are in place with FEMA to begin helping current storm victims as soon as the president approves his request for individual disaster assistance. For NPR News, I'm Karen Zarr in Lexington. Critical futures prices continue their downward slide today, hitting four-year lows as inflation fears mount over looming conflict between the world's two biggest economies, the U.S. and China.

Oil fell a dollar and 12 cents a barrel today in New York. I'm Jack Spear, NPR News in Washington. Since Donald Trump took office in January, a lot has happened. I'm Jack Spear, NPR News in Washington.