NPR News Now - NPR News: 04-19-2025 3AM EDT

Episode Date: April 19, 2025

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Shea Stevens, NPR News Anchor Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Shea Stevens. The Trump administration is taking steps to make it easier to fire federal workers by stripping away their civil service protections. NPR's Shannon Bond has the story. Shannon Bond, NPR News Anchor The Office of Personnel Management proposed a new rule on Friday, reclassifying many federal jobs as, quote, at-will employees. OPM estimates 50,000 positions, or about 2% of the federal workforce will be reclassified.

President Trump said on social media that if government workers quote, refuse to advance the policy interests of the president or are engaging in corrupt behavior, they should no longer have a job. The Trump administration is pushing to shrink the federal government and exert more control over it. The American Federation of Government Employees says this latest action will, quote, undermine the professional civil service that Americans rely on. Shannon Bond, NPR News. Shannon Bond, NPR News.

A federal judge is temporarily blocking mass layoffs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. CFPB's plan would eliminate roughly 1,500 jobs, with just a couple hundred remaining. A ruling by the Wisconsin Supreme Court allows the state's Democratic governor to use his broad veto powers to lock in a 400-year-long school funding increase. From member station WUWM, Maria Peralta-Ariano reports. Wisconsin governors can partially veto spending bills by striking numbers, words, and punctuation. At issue here was Democratic Governor Tony Evers veto of language that originally related

to a $325 per student increase for Wisconsin public schools for the 2023 to 24 and 2024 to 25 school years. Evers vetoed the 20 and the hyphen to make the fundings end date 2425, locking in the annual school funding increase for 400 years. In a 4-3 decision along party lines, Wisconsin's liberal-controlled state Supreme Court found that the modification is, quote, attention-grabbing, but the state constitution does not limit

the governor's partial veto power. For NPR News, I'm Maria Peralta-Ariano in Milwaukee. Immigration officials in Arizona detained a U.S. citizen for nearly 10 days on suspicion of being in the U.S. illegally. As Arizona public media's Danielle Kamara reports, the case has been dismissed. Court documents say on April 8th, Border Patrol agents arrested 19-year-old Jose Hermosillo without proper immigration documents. His girlfriend's aunt, Grace Leyva, says he lost his ID

and that his family provided officials with his birth certificate and Social Security card. He did say he was a U.S. citizen, but they didn't believe him. Yeah, I think they would have kept him. I think they would have. If they would have not got that information yesterday in the court and gave that to ICE and the Border

Patrol, he probably would have been deported already to Mexico. A magistrate judge in Tucson dismissed his case on Thursday and he was released. For NPR News, I'm Danielle Camara in Tucson. This is NPR. The U.S. Supreme Court is temporarily blocking the deportation of Venezuelan migrants being held in North Texas under the Alien Enemies Act. The ruling was issued in response to an emergency appeal from the American Civil Liberties Union. Earlier this month, the high court said that the deportations could proceed if the migrants

are first allowed to fight their removal in court. More than 130 alleged Venezuelan gang members were flown to El Salvador last month, including a Meriden resident who was illegally removed. Federal regulators have approved a $35 billion merger of Capital One and Discover financial services. As NPR's Scott Horsley reports, the combination will create the nation's largest credit card company. Putting Capital One and Discover credit cards in the same corporate wallet might mean less competition for credit card users,

but more competition for behind-the-scenes payment systems. Discover runs its own payment processing network, which could now be a more formidable rival to the much larger networks run by Visa and MasterCard. Merchants pay a swipe fee to those networks every time a customer makes a purchase with a credit card. Revenue from swipe fees has more than doubled over the last decade as prices have climbed and more people pay with plastic. As part of the merger approval, Discover agreed to pay a 100 million dollar fine for overcharging

merchants on swipe fees in the past. Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington. On Wall Street Friday, trading was closed in observance of Good Friday. The market reopens on Easter Monday. This is NPR News.