NPR News Now - NPR News: 04-08-2025 8AM EDT

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

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This is out of her glass. In Lily's family, there's a story everybody knows by heart. If this story had never happened... All of us wouldn't be here right now. Sammy wouldn't be here. Nina wouldn't be here. Wally wouldn't be here. Anyone that we know wouldn't be here.

So what happens when Lily's mom tells her this story is not true? This American Life, surprising stories every week. Live from NPR News in Washington, on Korva Coleman, world markets are trading higher. After yesterday's massive plunge on Wall Street in pre-market trading, Dow futures are up more than a thousand points. Investors were expressing fright over the effects of President Trump's tariffs. The latest tranche of tariffs takes effect tomorrow. NPR's John Rewich reports China is not backing down after Trump threatened Beijing with steep new tariffs.

Trump threatened to put an additional 50 percent tariff on China. That's if China does not retract a retaliatory levy on U.S. goods that it announced in response to Trump's tariff salvo last week. But Beijing is not blinking. Foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian told a press conference, if the U.S. insists on pursuing a tariff war and trade war with disregard for the interests of both countries and the international community, China, he says, will fight till the end. Global equity markets have been hammered by the prospect of sweeping U.S. tariffs and a worsening trade war between China and the U.S., the world's two biggest economies.

Stock markets in Asia, though, have rebounded after steep losses a day earlier. John Ruch, NPR News, Beijing. Chief Justice John Roberts has temporarily paused a lower federal court's order that told the Trump administration to bring back a man deported by mistake to El Salvador. NPR's Nina Totenberg reports the pause will let the Supreme Court consider the case. Nina Totenberg, NPR's Nina Totenberg, NPR The Trump administration admits that it mistakenly deported Kilmar Abrego-Garcia, an El Salvadoran citizen who's been living in the United States

for almost 15 years. The administration now says the deportation was an error, but that it is under no obligation to get him released from a notorious prison in El Salvador and returned to his wife and son in the U.S. A federal judge in Maryland ordered the government to do just that, but the Trump administration appealed to the high court. Chief Justice John Roberts issued a brief administrative stay to allow the justices time to consider the issues in the case Nina Totenberg NPR News Washington in a separate immigration case The US Supreme Court has ruled president Trump can use a wartime power to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador the high court says deportees must be allowed time to challenge this

congressional Republicans need to work out differences over a spending bill that the Senate passed last weekend. The blueprint would extend tax cuts passed when President Trump was first in office. But NPR's Barbara Sprunch says some fiscal conservatives in the House are not backing it. It comes down to numbers. What the Senate passed has bigger tax cuts and smaller spending cuts than the House's framework.

It also calls for a larger increase in the debt limit. So fiscal conservatives don't like this. There's also some critique about the type of accounting the Senate is using for extending the tax cuts. Their model assumes it costs nothing to do that. Independent assessments say it actually costs around $4 trillion. This is NPR. President Trump has

dismissed US Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield. She's the US military representative to NATO. No explanation has been given. Rhode Island Senator Jack Reid is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee. He's condemned this and Trump's firing of 10 generals and admirals without explanation. A stock market swing of more than $2 trillion yesterday appears to have been triggered by false comments posted on the social media platform X. And Piers Bobby Allen tells us some false reports

that President Trump was pausing his tariffs went viral on X. It all started when the National Economic Council's Kevin Hassett was asked during a live Fox News interview whether Trump would consider a 90-day tariffs pause. He said the president is going to decide what the president decides. Somehow on X, that turned into a bogus headline that Trump was considering a 90-day tariff reprieve. It was soon picked up by CNBC and Reuters, which have since backed away from the report. But not before $2.4 trillion was added then wiped away from the markets, according to

data from Dow Jones. Disinformation researchers say the episode illustrates the danger of some of Musk's changes to X, including that verification badges can be purchased, which can help false information go viral. Bobbi Allen, NPR News. Deadly storms over the past several days have left at least 23 people dead in the U.S. The storms plowed through the central, midwestern, and southern U.S. They poured so much rain that flash flooding was a significant threat.

The National Weather Service says that the problem now is river flooding. Ankurva Coleman, NPR News. NPR News.