NPR News Now - NPR News: 04-22-2025 6AM EDT

Episode Date: April 22, 2025

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Imagine, if you will, a show from NPR that's not like NPR, a show that focuses not on the important but the stupid, which features stories about people smuggling animals in their pants and competent criminals in ridiculous science studies, and call it Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me because the good names were taken. Listen to NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Yes, that is what it is called wherever you get your podcastsman Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Kori Fakulman. The Vatican says that Roman Catholic cardinals have decided to hold the funeral for Pope

Francis this Saturday. Francis died yesterday after suffering a stroke and heart failure. His body will be moved tomorrow morning to St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican for the ceremony. NPR's Lauren Frayer reports from Rome on the preparations for the Pontius funeral. Until a new pope is named, the acting head of the Vatican is the Camerlengo, in this case Cardinal Kevin Farrell, a Dublin-born U.S. citizen. He's in charge of sealing off the pope's apartment and destroying his fisherman's ring, historically to prevent misuse or forgery. In a break from tradition,

Pope Francis' will stipulates his burial will not be in St. Peter's Basilica, but instead in the Basilica of St. Mary Major. It's a smaller church in a lower-income immigrant part of Rome. After every foreign trip, Francis would go to that Basilica to pray before a Byzantine-style painting of the Virgin Mary. He was last there about 10 days ago. There are other past popes buried there, but not in more than 350 years. Lauren Freyer, NPR News, Rome. For Congressional Democrats,

our Annelle Salvador, on behalf of Kilmar Abrego-Garcia, he is the migrant illegally deported from Maryland last month. NPR's Joel Rose reports the lawmakers are calling on the Trump administration to return Abrego Garcia to the United States. Four Democrats from the House of Representatives, including Maxwell Frost of Florida, traveled to El Salvador to show their support for Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

We want to see him know he's alive and know that he's well, but also we want to make sure that this story doesn't go away. Frost says they were not allowedERE NOT ALLOWED TO MEET WITH OBREGO GARCIA BECAUSE THEIR TRIP WAS NOT SANKTIONED AS AN OFFICIAL CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION. THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IS REFUSING TO BRING OBREGO GARCIA BACK TO THE U.S. DESPITE A SUPREME COURT ORDER TO QUOTE FACILITATE HIS RETURN. IN COURT FILEMENTS, THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT CONFIRMED THAT OBREGO GARCIA HAS BEEN MOVED OUT OF A NOTORIOUS MEGA PRISON TO A DIFFERENT PENITison to a different penitentiary in El Salvador. Joel Rose, NPR News. Stock markets on Wall Street continue to see-saw. President Trump continues to bash Federal Reserve

Chair Jerome Powell, unnerving investors. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged nearly a thousand points yesterday. The Nasdaq sank well over 2%. Both indices are up sharply this morning. Investors are also concerned about the effects of Trump's global tariffs. NPR's Rafael Nam says the market drops suggest that some foreign investors are also abandoning U.S. markets. Typically, when you see the major markets in a country all fall at once it's a sign that foreign investors are heading to the exits. The Asian

financial crisis back in the late 1990s is an example. Now it's too soon to say we are in a crisis but there are genuine concerns that at the very least trust in the US has been shaken. NPR is Rafael Nam. It's NPR. NPR has learned the White House may be looking for a new defense secretary. That's after Pentagon Chief Pete Hegseth used the messaging app Signal to share sensitive information about U.S. strikes on Yemen, this time with his family. This was the second time Hegseth used the Signal chat to do this and it was on a personal cell phone. The White House has rejected this reporting as, quote, fake news. A note, NPR CEO Catherine Maher is also the chair of the board of the Signal Foundation,

which supports the app. The Federal Trade Commission is suing bride-sharing company Uber. The FTC claims Uber deceived customers about a subscription service known as Uber One. NPR's Bobby Allen reports. The FTC says Uber automatically signed people up for a premium service known as Uber One. The lawsuit claims Uber never received some customers' consent, failed to deliver promised savings and made it difficult for people to cancel. For instance, the FTC says Uber requires 12 different actions in the app to cancel and

that it was impossible to opt out within 48 hours of a billing date. Regulators say such a process violates federal consumer protection laws. An Uber spokesman says canceling is clear, simple and follows the spirit of the law. The FTC action comes as both Meta and Google are in federal court facing government lawsuits that could force the breakup of the companies. Bobbi Allen, NPR News. Harvard University is suing the Trump administration to stop the White House from freezing billions of dollars in federal funding.

Harvard rejected administration demands it claims the administration is trying to control academic decision making. I'm Korva Coleman, NPR News.