NPR News Now - NPR News: 04-17-2025 12PM EDT

Episode Date: April 17, 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, I'm Janine Hurst. President Trump is blasting Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell for not cutting interest rates. NPR's Scott Horsley reports it's not the first time Trump has criticized him. Scott Horsley The European Central Bank lowered interest

rates today, and President Trump would like the Federal Reserve to take similar action. Of course, political leaders in Europe have not launched a trade war, which threatens to raise prices for their citizens. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell warned in a speech this week that Trump's new tariffs are highly likely to generate at least a temporary rise in inflation. That's discouraging the Fed from cutting interest rates any further. This is not the first time Trump has criticized the Fed for keeping borrowing costs elevated. He says Powell's termination, quote, cannot come fast enough.

Powell has insisted he plans to serve out his term as Fed chairman, which runs through next spring. Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington. The Trump administration is hoping to fast track asylum cases in immigration court. As NPR's Ximena Bustillo reports, a new memo encourages judges to drop cases without a hearing. The memo sent to employees of the Executive Office for Immigration Review laid out a directive to drop quote legally deficient asylum cases. That's the office that oversees immigration judges inside the Justice Department. The memo means that a judge could turn away an asylum

application without holding a hearing. This is an effort to try to reduce the 4 million case backlog in immigration courts. 1.5 million cases are asylum requests. But immigration lawyers say the move could hurt asylum seekers who go through the legal system without a lawyer to help them. They say the process is already complicated. A hearing is an opportunity to help explain their case beyond what asylum seekers might know to write in the paper forms. Jimena Busceo, NPR News, Washington. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff are sitting down with French President Emmanuel Macron and European diplomats in Paris today to try to get closer to a peace deal or ceasefire in Ukraine.

In Paris, Eleanor Beardsley reports a Ukrainian team is joining them this afternoon. Eleanor Beardsley, The European and American remain far apart in their goals and expectations on how to bring the war to an end. Considering him a pariah, no Western European leader has spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin in years. But President Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, has met with Putin three times recently as the U.S. pursues deals with the Kremlin. The Europeans remain skeptical, pointing out that Putin has not budged on his maximalist

demands and continues to bomb Ukrainian cities nightly. The U.S. recently broke with its G7 allies and refused to condemn a Russian attack on the Ukrainian city of Sumi on Palm Sunday that killed more than 30 people. Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Paris. Wall Street's trading in mixed territory at this hour. You're listening to NPR News from Washington. The Menendez brothers face a key hearing in a courtroom today as a judge is expected to start hearing evidence that could give Eric and Lyle Menendez their first chance at freedom in more than 35 years. Their attorneys want the judge to resentence the brothers, convicted

of killing their parents, to manslaughter, citing years of alleged sexual abuse at the hands of their father. The hearing is expected to take two days, but the L.A. County District Attorney has filed a motion to again delay. Scientists have detected chemical signatures in the atmosphere of a distant planet that could suggest the presence of life. As NPR's Nell Greenfield-Boyce reports, some scientists are excited, others, though, are skeptical. The planet orbits a star about 124 light-years away. Researchers used the James Webb Space Telescope to study the tiny fraction of starlight that filtered through its atmosphere. Their analysis detected an abundance of sulfur-based

gases that, on Earth, are made only by life, such as marine microbes. Astronomer Nikhu Madhusadan is with the University of Cambridge. To be very frank, it was astounding. I had never imagined that this is what we would see. He says this planet could be an ocean world teeming with alien life, but the detection of these gases needs to be confirmed, and there may be unrecognized ways of making them without life. Nell Greenfield-Boyce, NPR News.

And I'm Janene Herbst, NPR News in Washington.