NPR News Now - NPR News: 04-09-2025 7PM EDT

Episode Date: April 9, 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. Staring down a potential global economic meltdown, President Donald Trump pushed the pause button today, giving most countries a 90-day breather from his new tariffs. Though the administration is raising the tax rate on Chinese imports to 125%.

NPR's Scott Horsley reports the president's tariff plan has whipsawed companies and consumers alike. It's kind of a hangover inducing cocktail of relief on the one hand and disbelief that hundreds of billions of dollars worth of import taxes can be added and then subtracted on the president's whim. In just the last week we've gone from very low tariffs on most countries to tariffs of up to 50% and now back down to 10%. You know, it's hard if you're a business person or just someone shopping for groceries to know how to behave in this environment. Baseline tariffs of 10% on most countries will stay in effect while Canada and Mexico are not subject to that tariff.

They are subject to other tariffs on some goods. Tariffs on steel and aluminum appear unchanged. Tech companies have pledged hundreds of billions of dollars to build data centers around the U.S. Mississippi has 20 billion in data center projects underway, but Steven Basaha of Gulf States Newsroom says data centers lead to few permanent jobs. Data centers are basically giant warehouses where the internet physically lives. They run the computer chips powering the AI boom and the hard drives that let you save your photos online. But the co-director of the Wardham Business School's AI

Research Center, Kartik Asanagar, says data centers often only need a few hundred workers to run. So when you see numbers like a $10 billion data-centered investment and you are asking what does it mean for our local economy, you have to really discount that number quite heavily. Data centers also eat up a ton of electricity. In fact, Mississippi power will burn coal at one of its plants for roughly a decade longer than planned to fuel the state's upcoming data centers. For NPR News, I'm Stephen

Masaha in Birmingham, Alabama. The Senate appears poised to confirm a billionaire astronaut as the next NASA administrator as NPR's Jeff Bromfield reports he faced questions over his ties to Elon Musk. Billionaire Jared Isaacman has flown to space twice with Musk's company SpaceX and Isaacman's payments company, Shift 4, does business with the spaceflight firm. During his confirmation hearing, Isaacman said Musk would not influence him. But when asked repeatedly by Democratic Senator Edward Markey whether Musk was in the room when Trump offered him the job as NASA administrator, he refused to answer directly. Senator, I was, again, my meeting was with the President of the United States.

I'm assuming that you don't want to answer the question directly because Elon Musk was in the room. During the hearing, Isaacman said he wants to return astronauts to land on the moon while simultaneously pursuing a human mission to Mars. Jeff Brumfield, NPR News. One of the best days in Wall Street history, the Dow jumped nearly 3,000 points today. This is NPR. The Treasury Department says it's issuing new sanctions aimed at Iran's disputed nuclear program.

It's been coming just days before senior officials are slated to hold talks in the Middle East. The latest sanctions target five entities and one person based in Iran. The Trump administration announced earlier in the week it was dispatching senior envoys to hold direct talks with Iran about its nuclear program. Some Egyptologists are hoping a trip to the Great Pyramids by the world's most popular YouTube star will spur more interest in archaeology. Here's MPR's Neda Oloubi. MrBeast, otherwise known as Jimmy Donaldson, got massive on social media for his wild stunts.

This one came with help from the Egyptian government. I somehow have unrestricted access to all the great pyramids of Egypt. Egyptian archeologists said that access was actually restricted. But the videos MrBeast put on TikTok and YouTube have gotten hundreds of millions of views. The influencer ooze and aahs

over ancient murals and architecture. This attention from someone with nearly 400 million followers, more than anyone else on YouTube, may help a country hoping to boost tourism with its new Grand Egyptian Museum opening this summer. Netta Ulibi, NPR News. Head of his 88th birthday, author Thomas Pinshawne is said to be set to publish his first book in more than a decade, titled Shadow Ticket. It's scheduled for October 7th.

Penguin Press made the announcement today, one of the most press-averse authors ever. Pinchon released his last book, Bleeding Edge, in 2013. His other works include Gravity's Rainbow, V, and Inherent Vice. I'm Jack Spear, NPR News in Washington.