NPR News Now - NPR News: 04-20-2025 8PM EDT

Episode Date: April 21, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Janene Herbst. Russia and Ukraine are blaming each other for carrying out attacks in violation of a temporary Easter Day ceasefire. NPR's Charles Maynes has more from Moscow. Even before the Easter ceasefire technically went into effect, both sides voiced skepticism the truce would hold. Putin warned of possible Ukrainian provocations and Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, suggested the offer was more gimmick than peace gesture. Today, Russia's defence ministry said Ukraine carried out hundreds of artillery and drone strikes on Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine.

Intern Zelensky said Russia continued shelling and assault raids across the front line. Neither claim could be independently verified. The ceasefire attempt comes as President Trump has threatened to abandon efforts to negotiate an end to the conflict if he didn't see immediate progress towards peace. Charles Maynes, NPR News, Moscow. Maryland Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen says the Trump administration is flouting the courts this day after he returned from visiting Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man illegally deported

to a prison in El Salvador. The courts ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return, but so far they haven't done that. And the White House says Abrego Garcia, whom they claim is a gang member, which he denies, will never come back to the U.S. And Piers Domenico Montanaro has more. It feels like we really are nearing a constitutional crisis. The administration continues to say it's following court orders and has found ways to walk a very fine line, even if sometimes it seems to be violating the

spirit of the law or these emergency orders it's enacting. I mean, the administration's claiming terrorist invasions, that there are state secrets for why they can't tell judges specifics on deportations or what they did or didn't do to bring back someone mistakenly deported because they can't tell a foreign country what to do. Danielle Pletka And here's Domenico Montanaro reporting. Pope Francis had a brief meeting with Vice President Vance this morning in Vatican City. Megan Williams has more.

The Vatican says Pope Francis met privately with Vance on Easter morning to exchange holiday greetings. The brief encounter came a day after Vance held more formal talks with senior Vatican officials. Francis, still recovering from pneumonia, did not attend those meetings. Vance, a Catholic convert, has publicly clashed with the Pope over immigration. Francis has called President Donald Trump's crackdown a quote disgrace and indirectly rebuked Vance for using Christian values to justified hardline

immigration policies. The Pope called the immigration policy a quote major crisis for the U.S. For NPR News, I'm Megan Williams at the Vatican. The Boston Marathon is tomorrow. Organizers expect more than 30,000 runners from 128 countries and they say there's no evidence that participation by foreign athletes has declined because of increased border security. You're listening to NPR News. The National Science Foundation is freezing its grant-making process at the direction of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. As NPR's Jonathan Lambert reports, the agency has stopped issuing new grants for basic research.

The National Science Foundation issues billions of dollars worth of research grants to scientists and institutions each year on a rolling basis. On Wednesday, that process came to a halt after DOGE gained access to internal systems, sources told NPR. All proposals that had been approved for funding were sent back to NSF staff for further review, though it's unclear why. Earlier this year, NSF reviewed all its grants, flagging many for diversity, equity, and inclusion-related terms. An NSF spokesperson told NPR the agency continues to issue new awards. Publicly available data reflect a stoppage that started Wednesday.

Jonathan Lambert, NPR News. Google will be back in court tomorrow for the final phase of a landmark antitrust case that could see the online giant broken up. In 2020, a judge ruled it's a monopoly after the Justice Department sued Google, accusing it of paying the makers of web browsers and phones to set Google as the default search engine. Google says it will appeal. The tech company's highly profitable ad business is powered by data it harvests from user activity on Chrome and Google search.

Tomorrow, the Justice Department and Google will present their idea of an appropriate remedy for the monopolistic behavior, which the government says could include selling its Android operating system or spinning off the Chrome browser. I'm Janene Herbst, NPR News. This message comes from NYU Langone. The NYU Langone Health app gives you access to your electronic health record. Keep track of your visits, lab results, and images all in one place. Better health starts with a better health system.