NPR News Now - NPR News: 04-16-2025 2PM EDT

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

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Since Donald Trump took office in January a lot has happened. The White House Budget Office ordered a pause on all federal grants and loans The impact of the Trump administration's tariffs is already being felt in President Trump's efforts to radically Remake the federal government. The NPR politics podcast covers it all. Keep up with what's happening in Washington and beyond with the NPR politics podcast. Listen every day. Live from NPR News in Washington and beyond with the NPR Politics Podcast. Listen every day. Winzer Johnston Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Winzer Johnston. A federal judge in Washington, D.C. has found that the Trump administration disobeyed his order to turn back two planes carrying migrants it was deporting to a prison in El Salvador last month. NPR's Adrian Florido reports Judge James Boesberg ruled

there was probable cause to find the government in criminal contempt of court. On March 15, President Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 so the government could quickly deport without due process people it said were members of a Venezuelan gang. It loaded two planes and they took off for El Salvador. The ACLU sued and Judge Boesberg ordered the government to turn the planes around. It didn't. Boesberg has been trying to determine whether the government purposely ignored his order. He's now ruled that it did. The Constitution does not tolerate willful disobedience of judicial orders, he wrote. He's given the government until April 23rd to rectify the contempt or to identify the

specific people who defied his order. Adrienne Plerido, NPR News. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he has shut down an office at the State Department that was reporting on Russian and Chinese disinformation campaigns. NPR's Michelle Kellerman reports Rubio argues it was a ploy to crack down on conservative voices in the U.S. In a statement, Rubio says he has closed what used to be called the Global Engagement Center. He says the office costs taxpayers more than $50 million a year. It was renamed at the

end of the Biden administration after Republicans moved to defund the office, accusing it of silencing and censoring Americans. That ends now, Rubio says in his statement. The office was set up to monitor disinformation campaigns by U.S. adversaries, including Russia, China and Iran. During the Biden administration, it reported on the English language news channel Russia Today's influence operations, which led to U.S. sanctions. Michelle Kellerman, NPR News, the State Department. Tensions continue to rise between Harvard University and the Trump administration. The White House announced this week it was freezing more than two billion dollars in federal funding to the school. Tilly Robinson is managing editor of the Harvard Crimson.

She says research teams at Harvard's medical school rely on federal funding. Harvard is clearly bracing to weather this kind of storm, and whether that means taking legal action, whether that means diverting funds from elsewhere in the university to support the continuation of this research. I think we just don't know what's going to happen next. Harvard University has refused to comply with the administration's demands that it get rid of its DEI programs and change its emissions policies.

Stocks are down sharply on Wall Street at this hour. The Dow was down 643 points, the Nasdaq composite down 581. This is NPR News. The Trump administration is suing Maine over the state's refusal to ban transgender athletes from women's and girls' sports. Maine Democratic Governor Janet Mills did not comply, saying her duty was to follow state law. Research has shown that in many age groups men drink more alcohol than women

But a new study suggests that in one category of young women aged 18 to 25 Women are drinking more like their male peers NPR's Katie Arittle reports on the study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association Researchers define binge drinking as five drinks in one occasion for men and four for women. Bryant Shuey is a professor of medicine at University of Pittsburgh and one of the authors of this study. We're seeing the gap in binge drinking between females, narrowing across all adults, with

young adult females binge drinking at a higher rate than their male counterparts for the first time. Roughly 31% of young women indicated binge drinking in the last month compared to 30% of males. Shuey points out that overall, younger people have been drinking less in recent years. This study just shows that younger men and women have similar drinking patterns. Katie Riddle, NPR News. California fishing regulators are closing commercial salmon fishing. The Pacific Fishery Management Council says the conservation effort would continue because of the low number of fall run of king salmon in the Sacramento River.

The season has been curtailed in Oregon as well. I'm Windsor Johnston, NPR News in Washington.